• Of course a Nicole Richie clothing line was inevitable. It's called Winter Kate, and it will be hitting stores next February. [WWD]
• The full Jimmy Choo for H&M lookbook is out. [Daily Mail]

• Nick Knight is apparently shooting Raquel Zimmerman for the spring Alexander McQueen campaign. [Fashionologie]
• At the Oprah Store in Chicago, you can buy items worn by Oprah Herself on the show, from Oprah's Closet. But don't dare try them on! The rule is "To preserve the integrity of the items and ensure that Oprah was the last person to wear them," says a clerk. [True/Slant]
• Dennis Hopper has done an Easy Rider-inspired sneaker — whatever that means; it's navy suede — for Hogan. [WWD]
• "It's really belittling of the customer to think that anyone from a different price bracket deserves anything less," says Stella McCartney, who has collaborated on lower-priced lines so far with H&M, Adidas, Le Sportsac, and now GapKids. [NYTimes]
• Isaac Mizrahi decided to open his first store in the middle of a recession because a psychic told him to. [Fashionista]
• Mizrahi also told audiences at the 92nd St. Y, "I've actually booked girls [for a fashion show] that weren't obese, they were real girls. Like gorgeous anatomy. And one was a stripper. And you could feel the energy in the room just go down. Closed the books. Pens went down. They were angry. I could feel the anger. And I never did it again, because I thought Why bother? It takes a lot to rile women. It takes like actual breasts. Someone with implants, they're fine. Yes, you're right. Fashion advertisements are hateful. Hateful. Yeah, but they wouldn't do it unless it worked, right? It works." [The Cut]
• Yvon Chouinard, 70, is the founder of Patagonia. And as you would expect, he's outdoorsy. "I used to spend 250 days a year sleeping on the ground. I've climbed on every continent. I'm old enough to have seen the destruction," he says. "The reason I am in business is I want to protect what I love." And it seems like corporate responsibility has been Chouinard's practice since long before it became a buzzword; Patagonia has donated 1% of its annual sales to grass-roots environmental causes since 1985, and it switched to only using organic cotton in 1995. It has persuaded Nike, Timberland, and Wal-Mart to switch, too. [USN]
• Meanwhile, Lily Cole is working with a group called the Sky Rainforest Rescue campaign, which is working to save a 3 million hectare area of rainforest in the state of Acre, Brazil. [Independent]
• Levi's apparently thinks corporate responsibility comprises adding an extra message to its garment care tags, asking customers to please consider donating the jeans to charity when they are no longer needed, oh yeah, and to care for our planet. [AW]
• A man named Daniel Storto makes gloves in a rust belt New York town called Gloversville. That's the best we can describe this story, which, though a tad long on the gosh-darnit quirky local color, you should totally read. [NYTimes]
• Why would anyone make a $650 necklace, take the care to plate it in gold, and then adorn it with fake pearls? Questions that should be put to some outfit that sells at Barneys called Mawi. [W]
• The save the garment district rally yesterday featured this grand promise from mayoral candidate Bill Thompson: "As mayor, I'll work with manufacturers, the fashion industry and labor unions to arrange for up to one million square feet of dedicated garment manufacturing space in nonprofit buildings." Meanwhile, one manufacturer wants tax cuts for companies that manufacture domestically, interest-free loans, vouchers for his rent, tariffs on imported garments, and a blow job from Anna Wintour. (All right, we made that last part up.) Enforcing existing zoning laws would probably work just as well. [Crain's]
• Judith Leiber once designed a bag for Hillary Clinton based on Socks the Cat. [Style.com]
• Louis Vuitton now has a store in Ulan Bator. That's in Mongolia. The country, or at least certain sectors of it, is awash in wealth from uranium and copper mining, and officials at LVMH are assured that "elegant women" are already sporting damier and monogram canvas items at Ulan Bator's "trendy nightclubs and restaurants." Louis Vuitton is not, however, the first luxury brand to hit the market: Ermenegildo Zegna opened last month. [WWD]
• Roberto Cavalli, after having visited Chechnya, will now take care of fashion business in Turkey. [FWD]
• Cynthia Rowley is doing a line of surfwear for Roxy. We want to see those alleged neoprene pencil skirts. [Racked]
• J. Crew nearly doubled its earnings forecast for the fourth quarter, and its stock rose by 10%, to $42.01. [TS]
• Sir Philip Green's Arcadia Group — which owns Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, and Burton — reported a 13% rise in pre-tax profits, to £213.6 million, for the year to this August. [Independent]

• Move over, David Beckham: Cristiano Ronaldo is posing in the spring Armani underwear campaign. [AP]
• Beckham, who says he decided not to renew his Armani contract, is said to be looking to launch an underwear line of his own. [WWD]

• A fit model who worked at Guess? for three years is suing the company for sexual harassment. She alleges that founder Paul Marciano made unwanted sexual advances, and cut her work hours after she resisted. [WWD]
• Yohji Yamamoto announced this morning it was filing for bankruptcy. [NYTimes]
• Meanwhile, Giorgio Armani launched a cell phone that costs $1,032. [Reuters]
• Grace Coddington's face on a t-shirt is definitely something we want. [Refinery29]
• Model Agyness Deyn abstained from booze at a party for a movie. Allegedly, it's because her boyfriend, Albert Hammond, Jr., of the Strokes, is in rehab. [P6]
• Naomi Campbell picked a bag from the Louis Vuitton spring collection to sell to benefit the White Ribbon Appeal, which works to reduce deaths in childbirth. The bag will cost 1,900 Euros; no word yet on what percentage of the proceeds will go to the charity. [Elle UK]
• Looking so nervous you'd have sworn she was about to have a heart attack, Katy Perry interviewed Karl Lagerfeld after his show in Paris. After asking him about the prevalence of metal trim in the collection, the Kaiser said it was actually metallicized leather. The look on the pop star's face when Lagerfeld tells her the one song that sums him up is Lily Allen's "It's Not Me, It's You," is priceless. Then the designer says, "I'm addressing what others do, or have done, but have never wanted to be somebody else." And Perry asks to borrow one of the "metal" dresses for the EMAs. [People]
• Mario Sorrenti is shooting Nicole Kidman in the next Omega watch campaign. "I love diamonds," says the star. [WWD]
• Project Runway is to become a Wii game. We hope that there will be secret levels you can pass into, where the designers will all start singing, "Daniel Franco, Where Did You Go." Or maybe, if you unlock a special sewing box, you look through it and see Tim Gunn and Andrae eating at Red Lobster. [MSNBC]
• Chanel Iman and Iman: Iman and Chanel Iman. These two beautiful ladies did a video for Modelinia, wherein they talked about diversity in fashion. "With the diversity on the runway, it's getting better. But we need more diversity in the campaigns," says Chanel. "The first couple of pages in the magazine is not, you know, ethnic girls." "It's amazing at this age, 2009, almost 2010, with Obama as President, that e should be even talking about this," adds Iman. Iman sums up her life advice thusly: "Just be true to yourself. And don't embarrass your parents. Please." [Modelinia]
• A Portuguese eBay user put a bag from the Jimmy Choo for H&M collection up for auction. The collection doesn't go on sale until November 14. The bag, allegedly from a photo shoot, didn't sell. [Racked]
• Dina Lohan told Access Hollywood not to believe everything you read about Lindsay's fancy new job in fashion, and how that's going. "She's just a little girl and God gave her this gift. She's just trying to create. She did great in Paris, don't believe what you read. She's genius at fashion." Meanwhile, she would like us to buy something called "Shoe-Hans." She herself will continue wearing footwear by Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, thank you very much. [The Cut]
• Rachel Roy says moving to the East Coast for university after growing up in the Bay Area was a shock, because the former could be "quite segregated, and I wasn't into that. I'm only 35 — so it's not like we're talking many years ago — but I wasn't used to it because I grew up around Samoans, African-Americans, and Filipinos. You go to a club based on the music you like, not based on the kind of people you want to be around. I kind of went into a culture shock when I moved to the East Coast. I try to bring back that laid-back, hippie-chic attitude that the Bay Area has to my business because I've interned at so many places in fashion where it can be quite anal. But I also love New York. I love that it's the closest city we have to Europe, so that's a part of me, but thank God I'm from an area that keeps me out of it." [FabSugar]
• Yesterday in Japan, a suit went on sale that claims to offer some protection against swine flu to its wearer. The $580 suit is coated with titanium dioxide, a chemical that can break down viruses that come into contact with it. To put it mildly: this seems unlikely to work. Why not get the swine flu vaccine instead? [Telegraph]
• Nars is celebrating its 15th year in business with a book featuring photographs of fashion celebrities like Daphne Guinness and Marc Jacobs wearing its products. François Nars did both the makeup and the photography. [WWD]
• Kate Moss met her longtime hairdresser, James Brown, when she was 14. She went to a party at his house, and his sister threw her out. "She thought her boyfriend was flirting with me," explains the supermodel. "So that was that, really," adds Brown. "It started with a fight." Also relevant to this video: HOLY ACCENTS. [Elle UK]
• James Mischka and Mark Badgley live in a 546 sq. ft. studio apartment in Midtown. How relatable! Which they moved into because they were spending too much time in their weekend home, a Lexington, Kentucky, horse farm, to justify the expense of a Greenwich Village duplex. Sigh. [WSJ]
• Philip Treacy designed footwear for the first time ever for the Valentino show. The renowned milliner says working for the foot was like "a whole other dimension." [Elle]
• Again, the article about Crocs, what they mean, whether or not they can make it as a going concern, and what that means. [Time]
• Lost in the news of Liz Claiborne's reshuffle yesterday — the Liz Claiborne line will be sold exclusively at J.C. Penney's, and Isaac Mizrahi's Liz Claiborne New York line will go to QVC — was the fate of Claiborne by John Bartlett, the men's wear line. It will cease to exist. Sorry, guys. [Racked]
• Uniqlo's parent company posted a record profit for the year, of $1.2 billion. [AdAge]
• Levi's profits fell 41% in the third quarter. [WSJ]

• Katy Perry, like Lady Gaga before her, has succumbed to the charms of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's fall collection. The singer wore this dress to the label's spring show — which is like wearing the band t-shirt to the concert. [People]

• Twelve Syrian fashion designers presented 60 looks in a catwalk show at a Damascus hotel. Framed portraits of Bashar and Hafez Assad looked down on the runway. [Breitbart]
• During a burlesque performance at Simon Cowell's birthday party, a man stripped down to a thong, wandered into the audience, and picked up Kate Moss and gave her a twirl. All while singing, "Don't Stop Believing." Shame her boyfriend, Jamie Hince, didn't think it was funny: he started yelling at the supermodel. [P6]
• Giambattista Valli, who used to design the house of Ungaro's ready-to-wear line before founding his own critically acclaimed label, speaks out on the Lindsay Lohan "artistic director" debacle: "An actress ought to be an actress, and a fashion designer ought to be a fashion designer. These are their own professions, so everybody ought to concentrate on one thing. I chose, in my life, to be a fashion designer." [FWD]
• Barneys New York's winter windows will present mannequins in tableaux based on famous moments from Saturday Night Live. Yes, there will be a Tina-Fey-As-Sarah-Palin. And an Amy Poehler on 'Weekend Update'. [WWD]
• Times' Critical Shopper Cintra Wilson, on Isaac Mizrahi's boutique: "Mr. Mizrahi's new boutique is cheerful and comfy: poured concrete floors, off-white armchairs draped with fur blankets. The designer appears to be playing his greatest hits for his most loyal audience: Upper East Side ladies of a certain age, for whom the designer seems to feel great tenderness and sympathy. Women who are vivacious without being loud, who defer to convention but still want to appear playful and smart." [NYTimes]
• Sylvia Venturini Fendi — the woman behind two of the biggest blockbuster bags of our time: the Baguette and the Spy — tells Women's Wear Daily that if the rumor that the Italian shows might decamp from Milan to Rome, which WWD was first to even mention, is true, she wouldn't be bothered in the least. "I think Rome is the perfect place for creative happenings. Gucci is there, Valentino. We are Roman — why not?" [WWD]
• In further "reporting" on its own rumor, the trade pub discovered that, actually, the head of the Italian Chamber of Fashion says relocation is "nonsense." [WWD]
• Speaking of handbags, don't expect to get your Hermès Birkin or Kelly any faster simply because of this recession: the company, long having incorporated artificial scarcity into its sales plan, says there is no reduction in the typical two-year waiting time for a purse. "It is shocking to have to wait two to three years, so we try to train as many craftsmen as we can," says Patrick Thomas, the chief executive. But: "Consumer demand has grown so fast that we haven't yet managed to reduce the waiting lists." Sure, sure. [FT]
• Four Chinese firms are seeking the bankruptcy of Ellen Tracy in a Manhattan bankruptcy court; they claim they are owed $3.8 million for goods sold. Macy's, which just yesterday announced an agreement to sell Ellen Tracy exclusively at a lower price point, says the petition doesn't affect the deal, as the firms' dispute is with the brand's former owners. The bankruptcy judge ordered Ellen Tracy to file lists of creditors and assets by October 21. [Crain's]
• Due to a slump in demand, Versace has shut its four stores in Japan, and is in the process of closing its Tokyo office. The Italian brand had operated in Japan for nearly 30 years. [FT]

• Ungaro's CEO says Lindsay Lohan was appointed creative director because, "Celebrities today attract lots of attention and having a moving, dancing, swinging, living doll is, we hope, going to bring down the age group at Ungaro while keeping the DNA."

• Linds has been working with Spanish designer Estrella Archs to produce Sunday's Ungaro collection in just three weeks, but when the New York Times stopped by the studio yesterday, "Ms. Lohan was conspicuous by her absence." [N.Y. Times]
• Christian Siriano will star in a Bravo reality show about him setting up a new shop and marketing his clothing line. [Variety]
• Suri Cruise's wardrobe has been valued at around $3.6 million. "They really splurge on Suri," says an insider. "Suri is very vocal when it comes to outfits. She's rarely seen in anything twice." [News.com.au]
• Isaac Mizrahi doesn't want you to call his new New York boutique a store. "I'm afraid to call it a store because that immediately makes you think about sales expectations," says Mizrahi. "It's more of an opportunity to show the collection and service the customer. I'm trying to get across the fact that clothing is a product of the creative process... Most designers are really good at retail. I always thought, ‘That's not my job.' This shop is me committing to retail." [WWD]
• Kim Kardashian is releasing her first fragrance in February with Lighthouse Beauty. Chris Lighty, a founding partner in the company, says, "Kim has created her own brand, which has really be able to extend off-screen and out of the reality show arena it started in. She's not a one-horse show." [WWD]
• Mariel Haenn, Rihanna's stylist, says of the look she'll be sporting to coincide with the release of her new album, "It's definitely going to be Rihanna in the raw state we've seen her in lately... Though she's an icon right now, this crazy super glam, we're going to see her being real—human. She hates too soft and girly... she still plays with her girly side, but there's always a tough piece somewhere, with edge." [Radar Online]
• Many designers are streaming their shows online this season including Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Emporio Armani, and Alexander McQueen. [Vogue]
• Burberry says it expects to boost operating profits by $6.4 million in the year ending in March 2010. It's re-negotiated its Japanese apparel license with two local partners and expects higher royalty payments than previously estimated. [WWD]
• Rather than having a huge relaunch, Nina Ricci unveiled its first collection under the creative direction of Peter Copping last night to only 75 people. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Mira Sorvino has been in New York this week asking people to donate suits to women who are trying to escape domestic abuse as part of the "Tell A Gal P.A.L." campaign sponsored by Allstate Foundation. People can donate business attire at Allstate offices through October 9. "The suits work in both a practical real way and a symbolic way," said Sorvino. "They give women a way to present themselves in a professional way." [WSJ]
• The costumes for Kylie Minogue's U.S. tour will be designed by Jean Paul Gualtier. [People]
• Crocs has entered into a new revolving loan agreement with PNC Financial Services group. The company can borrow up to $30 million under the new agreement. [Reuters]
• On The Bonnie Hunt Show yesterday Tim Gunn said of Michelle Obama wearing Crocs, "I like to think she was doing a footwear experiment... if she wasn't I'll do my first fashion intervention and show up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and insist I be taken to her closet." Video here: [People]

Easter Parade pretty - as whimsical as that treacly Sophia Coppola Dior ad, even if I am mixing designers and references with reckless abandon.


This reimagined Career Gal ensemble would be perfect on Maggie Prescott.


Ike worked these groovy psychedelic prints in periodically. They were no defense against the indignity of the cardboard boater.


Deconstructed Degas - with the obligatory touch of bionic archer, of course.


"Sesame Street" meets "Mame" - how far wrong can you go?


I like the mix of old-Hollywood glam and 90's-inflected layered shirtwaist.


Elements of the collection had a Cecil Beaton quality - after all, people want glamah from Mizrahi!


Pure "Ascot Gavotte" - and pure pretty.

[Images via Getty]

• The details of Fashion's Night Out — aka Anna Wintour's Plan To Save Retail — have been announced. Over 700 stores in all five boroughs will be participating in events that range from sewing circles to cook-ins to rock shows:

• Celebs and designers who will be in attendance at the various festivities include Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, Francisco Costa, Manolo Blahnik, Isaac Mizrahi, Kate Mulleavy, Diane von Furstenberg, Liev Schreiber, Stephanie Seymour, and Anna Wintour herself. Although all the tee shirt customization and free music will be enough to drag us around to at least a few stores come September 10, we're also tremendously excited by the idea of taking salsa lessons taught by Juan Carlos Obando. [WWD]
• As is to be expected, Vogue is apparently attracting a lot of attention from cost-cutting consultants McKinsey. Dare we hope that McKinsey will shake things up at the tired mag, and shake them hard? In other Condé Nast news, Teen Vogue's very stylish accessories editor, Taylor Tomasi Hill, is leaving to take a position at Marie Claire. There are no plans to replace her. [Fashionista]
• Agent Provocateur is launching a new line of super-expensive lingerie it's calling couture. Agent Provocateur Soirée will launch with an in-season show at New York Fashion Week on September 9, and hit stores in November. Prices top £2450. [Elle UK]
• The second issue of Love is out, and it turns out the preview image that surfaced online last month actually is one of the covers — editor Katie Grand chose Alex Hartley, and 18-year-old bass player she found on the Internet, for one cover, and Sting spawn Coco Summer for the other. [Fashionologie]
• Katie Grand had 35 guests at her recent wedding. Thirty-five guests who finished 28 bottles of vodka. Our kid of woman. [ToL]
• Dasha Zhukova, the 28-year-old heiress, art gallerist, and Grand's replacement editor at Pop, is rumored to be pregnant by her 42-year-old boyfriend, Roman Abramovich. [P6]
• An image of Scarlett Johansson which might be part of the ad campaign for a Dolce & Gabbana perfume launching later this year has leaked. The perfume is called Rose The One, and the picture is very soft and rosy looking, plus Johansson is already confirmed to be the face of the scent, both of which are signs that point to yes. [SassyBella]
• Tori Spelling has launched a children's clothing range. Little Maven will cost $26-$88, and is designed for kids up to 4 years of age. [Daily Mail]
• Naomi Campbell and Queen Rania of Jordan were introduced while holidaying in the south of France. There's no word on what they discussed upon meeting. [Daily Mail]
• The mayor of Kennesaw, Georgia, which is male model Sean O'Pry's hometown, is today giving the 20-year-old an official proclamation, because O'Pry speaks highly of Kennesaw in the interviews he does between gigs for Armani and Calvin Klein. [P6]
• Comme des Garçons and Converse are giving their collaboration wider distribution this fall. Four styles of the Comme des Garçons-designed sneakers will go on sale in select cities at the end of this month, and worldwide in October, for $100 a pop. [WWD]
• When asked about the person who irrevocably changed the way she looked at fashion, Heidi Klum generously named Karl Lagerfeld, despite the designer's stated dislike of her. [Newsweek]
• Everybody is wearing Lolita glasses. And by everybody, we mean Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Katy Perry, Nicole Richie, Kelly Osbourne, and Kim Kardashian. Clearly we ought to be wearing them, too. Or something. [NYDN]
• If you are a man who wants to buy Levi's jeans that are "re-created using the original techniques from 1873" for $395, you can do so, at J. Crew's downtown men's stores. [WWD]
• Riam Dean, the young woman who was asked to work in the stockroom by Abercrombie & Fitch because of her prosthetic arm, has sold the full, terrible story of her experience of discrimination to the Daily Mail. Dean says the £9,000 she won from the company in damages hasn't covered her legal fees. [Daily Mail]
• Hats are back, again. This story gets re-written every six months. [WSJ]
• The alligator "harvest" begins later on this month in Florida, but wildlife experts expect the number of the creatures that will end up as purses this year to be drastically reduced: while revenue from alligator skins topped $71 million in Florida in 2007, a mere $10 million is this year's industry estimate. What doesn't make sense about all these stories about exotic skins, whether alligator, crocodile, or python, losing their marketplace appeal, is the fact that among luxury categories, the bridge products — wallets, keychains, and other "aspirational" branded baubles — are the ones that are experiencing the steepest decline in sales. Brands from Hermès to Louis Vuitton have reported that their most expensive offerings, like exotic skinned bags, are still experiencing strong sales — if not actually leading sales across the whole brand. So what gives? Are the pythons and gators going to be left to their own devices in the Everglades this season, or not? [MSNBC]
• H&M's same-store sales fell 3% on last year during the month of July; analysts had expected a more modest 1% drop, since the fast fashion chain has been performing relatively well in the recession so far. [Reuters]
• Following another disastrous quarterly result, Abercrombie has announced it plans to further cut its prices. [WSJ]
• Escada USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, one day after the German parent company opened bankruptcy proceedings there. [WWD]

• Charlize Theron has nabbed the September cover of a slimmed-down Vogue. The issue counts only 584 pages, compared with the 840 pages of Sienna Miller's 2007 issue. Theron last made the cover in October 2007. [TFS]

• Kate Moss is the fall face of Just Cavalli. Splitting the difference between the competing trends of top- and bottomlessness, she poses for one ad in a tuxedo jacket and nothing else, and for another in some kind of leopard-print leotard. In a third, she wears a micromini sequined dress that seems to be held up with magic. [FWD]
• Legendary photographer Corinne Day — whose pictures of Kate Moss for The Face helped put the supermodel on the map — is facing a serious illness, and requires expensive medical treatment. Friends are trying to raise money by selling 500 prints of a 2001 photo of Moss nude on a bed; the pictures are £100 each. [LOVE, link NSFW]
• The first images of Jil Sander's hotly anticipated +J line for Uniqlo have just surfaced, and it looks fantastic. Japanese magazine Non-No shot seven looks from the men's collection, and it's entirely apparent that the German designer has not lost her talent for tailoring and her ability to pare down a look to its most basic, striking elements during her years in the fashion wilderness after being fired from her namesake label by owners Prada. +J, which hits Uniqlo stores this November, includes around 140 pieces of men's and women's wear, and prices start at $25. [Hypebeast]
• Macy's has announced that Ne-Yo will be the new face of Alfani's Red men's wear. [WWD]
• Uma Thurman has the campaign for Givenchy's new Angel or Demon perfume. [The Sun]
  
• Under Isaac Mizrahi's direction, Liz Claiborne continues to seek a higher-fashion image without shedding its affordability. To wit: this fall, Coco Rocha and her old flaming red hair star in a very kaleidoplaid campaign. Also, count this as another example of the models-in-the-supermarket fashion imagery trope. [Design Scene]
• Patrick Robinson and his design team at the Gap have been concentrating on the basics — and particularly on revamping the company's various styles of jeans. To advertise the offerings, the company has chosen a bevvy of top models, including Carmen Kass, Anja Rubik, and Arlenis Sosa, each identified with a particular style of denim — "The Boyfriend," "Curvy," "Long & Lean," etc. We wonder who it was, though, who chose to put the lesbian model Freja Beha Erichsen next to giant type that reads "Real Straight." [Models.com]
• Loeffler Randall is adding e-commerce to its website. [WWD]
• Jewelry designer Anna Sheffield's collection for Target hits stores at the end of this month. The pieces range from $19.99-$79.99; some are made of sterling silver. They all look very cool. [Lucky]
• You know the economy's terrible when Jessica Seinfeld serves pigs-in-blankets to Gwyneth at a charity gala. [WWD]
• In Paris, several recent fashion school graduates are starting their own lines — with a difference: instead of focusing on the tradition ready-to-wear, these young designers each want to do small collections made-to-measure for each client. And the prices are right: 50-80 Euros for a shirt, 70 Euros for a dress, 150 Euros for a jacket. In putting an affordable price on services that are something more than tailoring and something less than couture, with all its connotations of excess, these youngsters have almost certainly found a gap in the market. [DazedDigital]
• Meanwhile, shoe designer Jeffrey Campbell knocked off a Chloé boot. His offerings this season are basically just Ann Demeulemeester's and Balmain's shoes done for cheap(er). How is it this guy hasn't gotten sued yet? (Of course, Chloé probably took inspiration for their shoes from some vintage boots.) [The Greyest Ghost]
• And there are also instances of high-end brands ripping off less-expensive ones. Cf. Proenza Schouler's version of the Frye boot. [On The Fringe Of Fashion]
• After the record-breaking sale of all the art he collected with Yves Saint Laurent, partner Pierre Bergé plans to go ahead with an auction of furniture, sculptures, and textiles in November. The works are expected to fetch around $5.7 million; the proceeds will go to AIDS research. [WWD]
• Miss J's new memoir, Follow The Model: Miss J's Guide To Unleashing Presence, Poise And Power contains a troubling blind item about not being let in to a fashion show on the explicit instructions of the head of the PR company running the designer's front-of-house operations. The PR company seems to be Kelly Cutrone's People's Revolution, and the designer — specified as Brazilian — seems to be either Carlos Miele or Alexandre Herchcovitch. Was Miss J denied entry because he is black, or because he now bears the taint of Night-Time Tyra? The latter seems unlikely, since Miss J points out that the same designer later begged America's Next Top Model to use his line for the finale runway show when ANTM went to Brazil in Season 12. (That particular laurel went to Rosa Chá.) [Fashionista]
• The New York Fashion Week menswear schedule is out, and it contains some surprises. This season, Yigal Azrouël is killing his separate men's wear presentation, and combining his two shows into one. Philip Lim is doing the exact opposite, adding a separate men's wear presentation. [WWD]
• Feast your eyes on ShopBop's "WARTIME" array of products, and ponder the aestheticization of orchestrated human killing. [ShopBop]

• This speaks for itself: Win A Chance To Design Lindsay Lohan's Leggings. [FabSugar]
• Similarly exciting is news that Juicy Couture is launching a perfume called "Couture Couture." At a certain frequency of repetition, "couture" actually loses all meaning! [WWD]

• Selena Gomez is a new face of Sears. [UPI]
• Mike Dirnt of Green Day has a vegan shoe out — and all of the proceeds will go to the charity Soles4Soles. [WWD]
• Director R.J. Cutler says that larger-than-life Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley almost didn't make the final cut of The September Issue. "The process of boiling down the enormous amount of footage was so complicated that one late-stage cut of the film actually eliminated Editor At Large André Leon Talley entirely! Clearly a huge mistake, Talley was abundantly re-inserted into the next cut." [Racked]
• We demand to eat Isaac Mizrahi's strawberry-rhubarb pie RIGHT NOW. [W]
• If we were Isaac's interns, we'd probably have achieved that life goal already. [Fashionista]
• Le Bon Marché, the Paris department store, is selling a limited number of archival Balenciaga clothing and jewelry items reissued from the period 1932-67. Doubtless for thousands and thousands of dollars. Sigh. [WWD]
• Givenchy is adding another collection, to be called Redux. It'll be the house's signature looks, presented twice annually, and it'll hit stores just before its existing pre-season collections do. Ranya Mordanova looks pretty ballin' in this blouse and pants, and Redux pieces will start at around $340, this might be worth watching. [Vogue UK]
• Ever go looking for a reason to not give a shit about fashion designers going out of business? $395 Alexander Wang bike shorts might be that reason for today. [Cheap JAP]
• If you loved Missy Rayder's spread from the August issue of Dazed & Confused, or if you just love Missy Rayder, you should check out this mesmerizing behind-the-scenes video of the Wisconsin-born model going through her paces in an insane black leather corset. [DazedDigital]
• Looks like Marco Zanini's current position at Rochas is more secure than his last. (The designer was fired from Halston in the blink of an eye.) Zanini will open Paris Fashion Week, a tremendous show of support from Rochas' backers. [FWD]
• Hussein Chalayan, who just released a denim collaboration with J Brand, actually only wears A.P.C. jeans. Details, details! [Style.com]
• Lucky Brand underwear and sleep wear will be in stores next spring. [WWD]
• In case you need some leather booty shorts, Chloé Sevigny's fall collection for Opening Ceremony is starting to reach stores. [ONTD]
• Sorry, Fort Greene. That random rumor that you were getting a Topshop was...just a random rumor. [Racked]
• Although revenues dipped 2.1% in the last quarter at L'Oréal, sales rose 2.6%. [WWD]
• Steve Madden increased its quarterly profits by 59% over last year, to $12.1 million. [WWD]
• As a sector, retail stocks gained 1.4% yesterday, achieving a new high for the year despite some poor quarterly results and weak consumer spending. [WWD]
• A new state law in Minnesota requires state colleges to sell American-made apparel whenever possible. So those Gophers t-shirts might not actually come from China anymore. [NPR]

• Michelle Obama wore Michael Kors to celebrate the National Design Awards winners on Friday. "What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that becomes useful," said the first lady, to a crowd that included Francisco Costa. [WWD]

• Meanwhile, Ikram Goldman — the Chicago boutique owner who is the closest thing to a stylist for Michelle Obama — is in New York to view pre-fall collections. Although Goldman won't comment on anything the first lady might or might not wear in future, she did say that Thakoon Panichgul (whose clothes have been worn by Mrs. Obama before) had produced "probably my favorite collection that I've seen so far." [Style.com]
• And the fashion love for the Obamas goes beyond mere dresses: Jacquetta Wheeler pulled an André Leon Talley and volunteered for the campaign for three weeks in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, last October. The supermodel described the 17-hour days she pulled as "the most interesting and rewarding thing I've ever done in my life." [Vogue UK]
• Wannabe model Amber Le Bon is too "free and liberated" for university. [Telegraph]
• After the rejection, by the administrator of the bankrupt company, of three bids for Christian Lacroix's fashion house, a fourth more "serious" offer has been received from Italy's Borletti group. If a buyer is not found by the end of this month, the current owners, Florida's Falic Group, plan to shutter the house and continue just producing goods that license the Lacroix name. [WWD]
• Three words: Hello Kitty Sneakers. Fourth word: $145. [HighSnobiety]
• Amber Valetta has announced a design partnership with Los Angeles label Monrow. The supermodel's pieces — t-shirts, simple dresses, and blazers — very closely mirror Monrow's existing offerings. [Elle UK]
• Scott Schuman got drunk at a party in his honor in Toronto and decided to give a speech described by one guest as "rambling" and "nonsensical." That same night, he went on the record with Globe and Mail reporter Amy Verner. What ensued was an object lesson in why not to give interviews under the influence: Schuman leveled spurious attacks on designers James Coviello and Peter Som ("When I had my showroom in New York, [I told them], 'You have to build your brand,' and they didn't listen"), disdain for the media that have helped make him ("I don't need another interview with any other magazine or newspaper in the world") and plenty of bragging about his own sexual prowess ("I'm pretty good at the sex. And pretty good at picture taking. That's about it. Garance is pretty happy. And the hotel-room neighbours are pretty pissed.") "Garance" is Garance Doré, the French street style blogger for whom Schuman left his wife of 20 years — who had financially supported him after his showroom business failed — Christa. [OmgBlog]
• Isaac Mizrahi's QVC just-announced program sounds like it might be zany good fun to watch when it launches in December. Called "Isaac Mizrahi Live!" it'll weave the designer's pitches between his extemporaneous monologues about life and his other daily activities. It'll be filmed in his real New York studio. The show will also sell Mizrahi's cheesecakes — which he, an accomplished home cook, fine-tunes the recipes for and decorates. Hopefully they'll find time to plumb his affection for the word "sauté" as well: "I liked the way it sounded — sauté, sauté, sauté!" [WSJ]
• There is an astounding 46.6 square feet of retail space for every single person in the United States. But, as we all know, this recession is causing that number to fall. Businesses are closing up shop entirely: regional department stores like Mervyn's and Gottschalks, as well as chains like Steve & Barry's, S&K Famous Brands, Abercrombie & Fitch's Ruehl, and Pacific Sunwear's D.e.m.o. and One Thousand Steps. Troubled retailers that still hope to survive this downtown are nonetheless shutting stores left and right: Jones Apparel Group is closing 225. Ann Taylor, 163. All told, 8.1 million square feet of retail space was vacated during the last quarter. UBS Securities expects a contraction of 10% in retail space over the next few years. [WWD]
• San Francisco artist Stephanie Syjuco decided to counterfeit designer handbags — in handicrafts. Her crocheted objects created after brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry, and Chanel are intended as a "critique of a political economy," and you can watch a short documentary about Syjuco's project. [Threadbared]
• A slightly more par-for-the-course tale of handbag counterfeiting is buried in the story of last week's New Jersey money-laundering and corruption case, which led to the arrest of 44 businessmen and politicians. The government informant who helped make the case claimed his fortune came from the fake handbag business. The FBI gave the informant large sums of cash, which he then gave to the defendants to launder; his explanation for how he came by the cash was caught on tape. "The business is very good now because the market's down — economy's down, and everyone wants to buy. Instead of spending $1,000 for a Prada bag, we sell it for $200; Gucci bag, $300. It's $1,200 in the store," the informant, who is believed to be 36-year-old rabbi's son Solomon Dwek, said in June, 2008. [WWD]
• Oh, look: someone figured out how to make money from a fashion website by combining editorial content, user-generated content, and e-commerce. Magazines take note. [NYTimes]
• Inventors have discovered how to turn used coffee grounds into a soft, breathable, but water resistant fabric. [Guardian]

• Kylie Minogue was in Jean Paul Gaultier's front row yesterday because she's looking for outfits for her American tour, which kicks off in October. Might we suggest this? [Elle UK]

• In the 1930s aesthetic of some of the couture shows — especially Gaultier's — some observers see the influence of our current economic crisis. We'd argue that anyone who saw Jean Paul Gaultier's crocodile overalls and furs and thought "This is the new frugality!" is blind, but whatever. [Reuters]
• Marc Jacobs is extending his reach in the West Village of Manhattan. The designer already has five stores in a radius of as many blocks, but he still expects to open a sixth in the neighborhood next February. The space, at the corner of Bleecker and West 11th Sts., has been occupied by the Biography Book Shop for over 20 years. "The space is now worth eight times what the Biography Book Shop was paying," said building owner Alexander Brodsky, who added that Marc Jacobs would be paying more than $400/sq. ft. The fate of the book store is unknown. [WWD]
• And here's Jacobs on those bunny ears Madonna wore to the Met ball, which she also sports in the fall Louis Vuitton ad campaign: "There's a girl who works for us, Lucy, she's on the design team, and Adrian, one of the boys, was tying a little bit of fabric around and it reminded me of bunny. We were thinking of all these different things like can-can dancers, and I saw this piece of fabric wrapped around Lucy's head and said, 'Bunny ears, that's what we need to finish this look.' So we made all these radzimir bunny ears and that's how it happened. I like the kind of Playboy, French coquette aspect to it." Jacobs also referred obliquely to the extensive use of Photoshop — "The solarization that they're doing to the pictures is going to give a really dramatic effect" — and confirmed that the painter Tamara de Lempicka had been a reference. [Fashionologie]
• Celebrity fashion lines are not faring well in the market downturn. A round-up of those that have closed: Mandy Moore's Mblem, Heidi Montag's Heidiwood, and Jennifer Lopez's Sweetface and JLO by Jennifer Lopez. Paris Hilton also closed her unsuccessful line with Dollhouse, and Lauren Conrad put her clothing line "on hiatus" (although she did hit back with a lower-priced range for Kohl's). Interestingly, lines where the celeb doesn't have the star branding role — Justin Timberlake's William Rast, Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B., Jay-Z's Rocawear — are proving more resilient. [WWD]
• That doesn't mean fashion houses don't still believe celebs can move product. Marion Cotillard is in another new ad for Dior's Lady Dior handbag. [GlamChic]
• Diane von Furstenberg totally wishes Brüno had crashed one of her shows. [WWD]
• New York bumped into prominent couture consumer Daphne Guinness on the street, and asked her about her outfit. Guinness was wearing a fitted black dress by L'Wren Scott, black scarves, asymmetrical cat-eyed sunglasses, and 7" red platform Mary-Jane heels. [The Cut]
• An exhibit at the Museum at FIT, which opened Tuesday, explores fashion's relationship with politics. Included is everything from white suits worn by suffragettes to Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's sequined dress with Obama's face. Of course, also still open at the Museum at FIT is the Isabel Toledo retrospective that features Michelle Obama's inauguration day outfit. [WWD]
• We've officially found the limits of Mrs. Obama's fashion appeal: Russia, apparently, is immune to the charms of her sheath dresses and belts. "Her clothes are modest and neutral," said local designer Denis Simachev. A Russian fashion historian attributed the cool reaction to a difference in taste, the Russian being somewhat more outré: "A lot of Russians think that when something shines, it's beautiful." [WWD]
• Meanwhile, the White House is locked in a war of words with an Italian luxury goods brand over a clutch purse. VBH claims that Michelle Obama carried its black crocodile envelope clutch, sticker price $5,950, during a meet-and-greet with President Medvedev and his wife Svetlana. The White House says the purse was a black patent clutch that cost $875. Please let the Obamas not be stupid enough to lie about something so minor and so easily disproven. [NYDN]
• Everybody's favorite pervy photographer, Terry Richardson, is being immortalized in a 7.5" action figure. [Slamxhype]
• The Wall Street Journal road-tested some vegan shoes, and found that faux leather and suede are getting realer looking by the minute. Pity two of their four offerings cost over $150, and one costs over $1,200. [WSJ]
• Isaac Mizrahi curated a summer show at the Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea, which opens tonight. The busy designer modestly says the principal theme is just "work I like by people I like," but Mizrahi goes on to explain how his famous sense of color has been informed by his favorite artists over the years. "Every time I think about color I refer to Julia Sherman," says Mizrahi. "Those Julia Sherman reds next to pale, pale pink, my Spring collection is going to be all about that. I feel like people are really open to color now. When I launched in ‘87 and I did super-bright colors, they loved it, but they didn't buy it. They'd shoot it, they'd laud it, but they'd wind up buying black. I'm talking about New York, now. The South is a different story-that's always been a haven for me. But here in the city, these days-it's nuts, color is what flies off the rack. My own line, and Liz Claiborne, too. More color sells better."
  [Style.com]
• Shoe designer Jimmy Choo says you should wash your feet in warm, salted water every night before you go to bed. Also he says that Malaysia is beautiful and you should visit. [Daily Mail]
• In case you're not already reading BryanBoy, plus Susie Bubble, the Sartorialist, Jak & Jil, and Fashion Toast, here are a few reasons why you might want to.
  [TDB]
• Once upon a time, Kira Plastinina was just another teenaged Russian orange juice heiress with a love for pink clothes. Then Kira wanted a fashion chain, so her dad bought her one. The stores did well enough in her home country and in Ukraine, but Plastinina had her her eyes set on a higher prize: the American market. So her dad agreed to pay for Kira Plastinina stores all over the East and West coasts, and threw a launch party/16th birthday where he paid Paris Hilton and Usher to show up. Within seven months, the whole hot-pink operation had been shuttered, and Kira's U.S. vehicle, the K.P. Clothing Co., was in Chapter 7 liquidation with debts of over $54 million. Which outcome, one might think, would put paid to little Kira's notions of world chain store domination — but no! Cleverly disguised under a new business name (Pink Square) and a new brand (K. Plastinina), the teenaged tycoon reopened two of her former Los Angeles locations. Which is where protesters from a building company that did $2.5 million worth of unpaid work went to go find her yesterday. "The point of all this is that there are still people suffering because of what [the company] did," says Aaron Rectenwald, who built Kira eight of her original American stores. "We haven't gotten the attention of management yet so we'll be coming back until we do." [WWD]
• The 17 workers suing New York-based retailer Scoop for allegedly giving them bogus promotions to salaried positions to avoid paying them overtime staged a protest outside Scoop's SoHo store yesterday. The former employees, most of whom are from West Africa, also allege that Scoop fired people who were in fact legal residents for supposed immigration violations. Scoop's current owners released a statement that read, "Although these allegations are against Scoop's previous management, we've conducted an internal audit to insure the company is in compliance with local, state and federal wage and hour laws. Scoop's current wage and hour practices are conducted in accordance with all state, local and federal laws." The chain's founding owners had no comment. [WWD]
• Gap Inc. expects to expand into Thailand by next Spring. The company as a whole will, however, close more stores than it will open in the next fiscal year — 100 compared to just 50. [WSJ]
• Over 3,000 pairs of Charles by Charles David high heeled shoes sold at Nordstrom Rack from April to June of this year are being recalled. The recall affects various colors and styles of shoe, and was put into effect because the heels of the shoes can easily detach while the wearer is walking. If you're affected, you can take yours back to the store for a full refund. [UPI]

• Here we have it, the first official glimpse of Kanye West's Louis Vuitton sneakers, aka THE BEST SNEAKERS KNOWN TO MANKIND EVER. The $700+ kicks were inspired by the movie Dune, and Kanye's own mind-blowing genius. [Racked]

• Former supermodel Karen Mulder has been arrested in Paris for allegedly making death threats to her plastic surgeon. When she quit modeling, Mulder alleged that executives at Elite had used her and other models as sex slaves offered to politicians, influential media figures, and other officials. Mulder then was admitted into a psychiatric facility; Gerald Marie, the head of Elite Paris and one of the men she accused of abusing her, paid for her treatment. Marie was earlier the focus of a BBC sting operation that filmed him offering a woman posing as a 15-year-old model 300 pounds for sex, and talking of his desire to seduce as many of the teenaged contestants in the Elite Model Look competition, which was how Mulder originally shot to fame, as he could. Marie remains the head of Elite Paris. [Telegraph]
• Twiggy is back as the face of Olay — a company she first modeled for in 1985. [Daily Mail]
• Blake Lively would like you all to know that getting dressed is something she manages to do all by herself. "It would probably help if I had a stylist, but I don't," the actress said. Taking sole responsibility for that Met Ball monstrosity really is kind of ballsy. [WWD]
• Levi's is touting its button-fly 501s with a new America-themed, Ryan McGinley-shot advertising campaign. [NYTimes]
• Man cleavage: Is there a limit to how much you can take? Glamour wants to know. [Glamour]
• Lovebirds Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone have had to push their nuptials back to August, because of the former's work schedule. They still plan to tie the knot in Provincetown, where Robert Duffy has a home. [WWD]
• Rejoice, "older" women, you have nothing to lose but your chains! Herein we dispense with the notion that women of a certain age "can't" wear florals, short skirts, bikinis, dresses that show cleavage, especially "pufftastic" cleavage such as older woman Liz Hurley's, and tops that reveal bare arms, and then we append a series of limits and guidelines on how, precisely, such items should be worn. The rules to dressing are dead. Long live the rules to dressing! [ToL]
• Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell was seen on the premises of Topshop HQ, and that must mean she is in talks to design a namesake clothing line with the British retailer. [Mirror]
• Bulgari's new scent, Blu II, is inspired by "a modern vision of the color blue" and advertised by Laetitia Casta. [NST]
• Michael Kors' Fall 2009 ad campaign stars...Carmen Kass and Noah Mills. Add Kors to the list of designers sticking with the tried-and-true this recession, then. [WWD]
• Hartmarx has lost three top executives. The bankrupt company, which was just bought by the private equity fund Emerisque, just had its senior vice president and CFO, the president of its women's wear division, and the group president of luxury. Emerisque takes control of the company on July 7. [ChicagoSunTimes]
• Johan Lindeberg, the founder of J. Lindeberg, has reluctantly left his label over creative differences with Proventus, the Swedish investment firm which has owned the business since 2007. Proventus hired a new design director without seeking Lindeberg's input, and the women's wear line which was supposed to relaunch under the direction of his wife, Marcella, never materialized. The partners have designed Justin Timberlake's William Rast line for the past three seasons and earned plaudits for it from the fashion press — but rather than make William Rast their sole creative outlet, the Lindebergs plan to launch a new line, called Paris68. It'll feature made-to-measure tailoring for men, dresses for women, and high-end denim and leather jackets for both sexes. [WWD]
• Children's wear retailer Best & Co. has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. [Crain's]
• The Met is screening three fashion-themed movies as part of its "Model as Muse" exhibit. And even better than the films are the people the museum has arranged to discuss them: model Carmen Dell'Orefice will be on hand for Funny Face on July 10, Qui Etes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? will be discussed by its title actress, Dorothy McGowan, and Isaac Mizrahi will talk about the 1995 documentary that features him, Unzipped. Tickets are just $10. [Met]
• Mizrahi is also curating an art exhibit at Manhattan's Julie Saul gallery. The summer group show features works from Maira Kalman, Julia Sherman, Wayne Thiebaud, Donna Chung and Jane Freilicher, and it's open until September 12. [WWD]

• One of the hazards of dating a rock star: When, mid-fight, you want to throw some of his stuff into a pool, there's a slight risk that he might have unreleased, non-backed-up new songs among his personal effects. [Mirror]

• "I used to bring pies to the office," says amateur baker Peter Som. "I can't eat them all myself." How did that dude ever get fired? [WWD]
• Thus spake Lacroix: "Don't tell anyone, because I'm not allowed to do this, but we absolutely are going to have a show in mid-July, during Fashion Week –- and it won't be a funeral: it'll be a fightback." Since Christian Lacroix's fashion house, owned by the U.S.-based Falic group, entered bankruptcy, the fate of the couture show has been in serious doubt. "It can't cost us a single Euro to put this show on, because I'm not having my workers lose a penny from their pockets, but so far, it looks like thanks to other people's kindness — friends and suppliers working for free — it might happen. I can't stand the idea that people think I am to blame [for the bankruptcy] but to a certain extent I am paying for not having done what everyone else did, with their logos and It-bags. I never went down that route." Lacroix has been working for free for 18 months, and is owed 1.2 million Euros in back pay. [Telegraph]
• Model Lily Cole earned a first in her end of year art history exams at Cambridge, one of only three students to receive the top grade. [Mirror]
• Yigal Azrouel, whose relationship with Katie Lee Joel is rumored to have brought about the end of the latter's marriage to Billy Joel, romances a lot of ladies. (He is an attractive, straight man working in fashion. Duh.) One rumor alleges Azrouel sleeps with editors at magazines to further his career. [P6]
• Chanel and Burberry model Emma Watson is said to be launching a clothing line for children and teens to benefit Unicef. [Hindustan Times]
• Usher says his men's fragrance really "represents the growth I've had in the last two years." VIP, which he's set to launch this September, is a "tool of engagement for seduction...made for a man but for women to enjoy." [WWD]
• Uh-oh. Sales of perfumes fell 6% overall in 2008, and 7% during the first quarter of 2009. Estée Lauder's fragrance division said the last three months of 2009 saw sales fall 20%, and another perfume company executive said anonymously that he believed sales for this year were down 15-20% because distributors are not restocking after selling to retailers. [NYTimes]
• "I don't want to do 'Adele by Adele' perfume!" says Adele. [LATimes]
• A judge refused to dismiss gourmet butter distributor Clint Arthur's lawsuit against Louis Vuitton for selling off-cuts of fabric as art prints. [P6]
• You really know you've hit the event horizon of aspirational shopping when someone from a company that makes plastic shoes describes her products as "affordable luxury." [LATimes]
• Robin Givhan at the Washington Post sees in H&M's just-announced collaboration with Jimmy Choo the end of luxury as we know it. "There's something about cheap Jimmy Choo shoes that doesn't feel right," writes the critic. "Women's shoes have been sold on a centuries-old mythology that makes the discovery that Jimmy Choo can produce a desirable pair of shoes for less than $50 as jarring as when Dorothy pulled back the curtain on the Wizard." [WaPo]
• Actually, the cheapest offering from Jimmy Choo's H&M collection will retail at around 40 Euros, or $55. The 12 women's styles and four men's models will range in price from there up to 200 Euros, or $138. Bags will cost up to 200 Euros. It all goes on sale in select H&M stores on November 14. [WWD]
• Cool looking Missoni-printed Converse Chuck Taylors will also be a thing you can buy, starting next summer. [WWD]
• Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton is, according to rumor, sitting on an offer for a year-long internship at American Vogue from Anna Wintour. Middleton, a former fashion buyer, could take her pick of either working in New York or Los Angeles. [Hindu]
• Jason Wu anticipates $4 million in sales this year and sees a men's wear division in his future. The 26-year-old enjoys spending his Sundays browsing at the Strand and playing poker with a $20 buy-in, "just enough to take it seriously but not enough to feel bad when you lose." [NYTimes]
• The Fall Calvin Klein Collection and CK Calvin Klein ads have leaked — they feature Monika "Jac" Jagaciak and Jourdan Dunn and Sigrid Agren, respectively. The Collection campaign was shot by David Sims and CK by Craig McDean. [Fashionologie]
• Isaac Mizrahi is opening a store for his namesake label in August. It'll be 1500 square feet and located on the Upper East Side. [WWD]
• Cashmere prices have fallen so drastically that many herders of cashmere goats have had to sell their animals for meat. Orders for winter cashmere sweaters from the West have fallen by up to 30%. And get ready for a cold season: the garments being made are using less cashmere. "They are too small — half the breast is outside the sweater," said one factory's sales manager. [NYTimes]
• Jil Sander is on the comeback trail in a big way. The German designer, who lost the use of her name to Prada when the Italian company bought out her house and fired her, has just announced a fine jewelry collaboration with Damiani. This is in addition to her new position as a creative director of Uniqlo. [WWD]

If you're interested, you can watch the episode — titled "Shape Shifters," here. This is the lowdown:

Upon learning that the challenge would involve "real" women and not models — and then seeing the tall blonde he had to make a dress for, designer James-Paul said: "I am going to die. It's like asking Jesus Christ to like, work with Satan."


Here they are; James-Paul is on the right, "Satan" is on the left in blue. Does she look like a normal person with a normal body to you? Maybe even a great body? Yeah. Me too. But James-Paul was was right about one thing: He doesn't know how to design for real people. This is what he came up with:


Downgrade.


Over on Tom & Lorenzo (formerly Project Rungay), the guys wrote:

Now, normally we dread when shows like this do a so-called "real world" challenge because our comments section tends to explode with outrage from, well, "real" women. We don't blame them for that, but we recognize how much and how well certain buttons are being pushed in certain segments of the audience.

Having said that...

THESE WOMEN ALL HAD PERFECTLY FINE BODIES, YOU ASSHOLES.

They continue: "Honestly (and we realize some of you may disagree), if they were actually dealing with obese clients we could at least understand some of their dismay (because that does require an entirely separate skillset), but we're talking about average women with, frankly, above average bodies."

And the way the designers talked about these poor women! Merlin had a woman named Amber, who was gorgeous (she's the one on the far right with the long dark hair, in the lead photo above), but he started out with, "Tell me: What is the thing that bothers you most about your body." Not, hey what kind of dress do you want? What's your style? Merlin went on to say, "It's the hardest challenge. Because… all these girls, they have problems with their bodies." It seems to me that the only "problem" could be if they were DYING OF CONSUMPTION. If their bodies work, there are no problems.

But the designers bitched and whined about having to add padding to their dress forms — due to one woman having a 43-inch ass; and another having 45 inch hips.

Daniella, who just got out of school, cried. She said she'd never felt more uninspired, because her woman was "big all over." Here's what that looked like:


Keep in mind that the camera adds ten pounds.

Isaac Mizrahi, to his credit, said to Daniella, "When you work in the real world, she's the average size. I find it slightly size-ist of you."

Some how the black man — Reco — who says he often designs for his sister, a size 12 and aunt, a size 16 — didn't win, even though his design was pretty cute:

This is the crap that won:

Guess what? Daniella, the one who shed tears, is the one who made it. Anyway, as one reader wrote in her email, the way the designers behaved when faced with women who were not size zero models "was revolting and highlighted exactly what is wrong with the fashion industry." Another reader noted that the "real" women actually "had better than average bodies," but of course, the Bravo camera still felt the need to pan over their "flaws."

Looks like we made the right choice in abandoning this show early on.

The Fashion Show [Bravo]
The Fashion Show Episode Player [Bravo]
TFS: Congrats and Bye-bye [Tom & Lorenzo]

• Victoria Beckham reportedly owns 100 Birkins, with a $2 million value. Although Posh's penchant for the carryalls isn't in question, we do nonetheless note this story has two pictures of her holding Kellys. [Daily Mail]

• Right after settling the lawsuit brought against it by Woody Allen to the tune of a cool $5 mil, American Apparel released its quarterly results. And they were less than glowing. In the period ended March 31, the fashion giant lost $9 million, as operating costs rose 21%, to $69.3 million, and sales grew only 2.4%, to $114.3 million. Company stock fell by 20% during yesterday's trading. Because of the classification of its revolving credit facility as a long-term obligation, American Apparel may also be obligated to restate its previous financial statements. It has already reduced its full-year sales forecast by $25-$50 million. [Reuters]
• Michelle Obama cut the ribbon on the renovated American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wearing a purple Isaac Mizrahi sheath. Oscar de la Renta was heard to sob quietly into his pocket square. [WWD]
• Then, she went to the American Ballet Theatre's spring gala at the Metropolitan Opera House, where she wore an Azzedine Alaïa dress and a Thakoon jacket. Earlier, at the museum, she said: "The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation." [AP]
• Anna Wintour's office chairs, glimpsed briefly in the 60 Minutes segment that aired Sunday, have been ID'd: they are classics of Art Deco design, and cost $250 apiece. [UnBeige]
• Brüno has a Twitter account, and you can expect Tweets in the character's voice until the movie hits theaters on July 10 (it is, naturally, a marketing effort). For now, enjoy witticisms such as: "Am I ze most gifted Austrian ever? Let's just say zat at 14 ich could play Rock Me Amadeus on ze flute. Falco didn't write it til he vas 29." And: "Ze vorld ist zo screwed up - vhy do zey give out Nobel Prizes for physics, medicine und svimming, but not for fashion?" [Brüno's Twitter]
• Isabel and Ruben Toledo, fashion designer and fashion illustrator, respectively, were honored with the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award at the Savannah College of Art and Design's annual fashion show. Talley told the crowd, "The Toledos represent a quarter century of love and brand building. They're like two oaks, branches intertwined forever." [Reuters]
• In other awards-show effusions, Betsey Johnson compared New York Fashion Week head Fern Mallis to David Bowie and Mick Jagger as she presented her with Parsons' AAS Icon Award. When students in the Associates in Applied Science fashion marketing program got a little rowdy, Johnson quieted them with four words: "I'm looking to hire." [WWD]
• For a taste of how the Valentino half lives, imagine this: fireplaces ablaze out of season, air conditioners running, and uniformed manservants depositing cool glasses of water onto linen napkins. Also: secret buttons inside the bookshelves. [Guardian]
• Marc Ecko has announced he'll be doing co-branded collections with DC Comics, incorporating the characters of Batman and the Rogues Gallery. Perhaps the superheroes can save his troubled business? [WWD]
• Burberry, in the year ended March 31, lost $9 million. Its core earnings fell 13%, but annual sales rose 21%. The main reason for the loss was a company write-down that cost £116 million. The brand, which has already laid off 800 workers, still expects to open 10-15 stores this year. [WSJ]
• Yesterday, we included a Rag Trade item, sourced to WWD, about designer Erin Fetherston. Fetherston was reported to be making a short film about her fall collection in New York's West Village, starring Juliette Lewis with music by Damon Dash, and her husband, the artist Hedi Firjani, told WWD that Fetherston was looking to launch a line with QVC, probably timed to coincide with New York Fashion Week this September. Both are untrue, according to Fetherston's PR rep, who contacted us shortly after we published. Fetherston is making a film, with director Marisa Crawford, but Juliette Lewis isn't the star. And the deal with QVC is not confirmed.

The concept of the program — fifteen designers competing to win a cash prize — will seem familiar to you, since five seasons of a show called Project Runway have aired. But The Fashion Show is no Project Runway; it lacks the soul, heart and guidance of Tim Gunn; the kooky honesty of Heidi Klum and the bish plz of Nina Garcia. What TFS does have are insane deadlines, a "fashion show" held in front of an audience and tons and tons of headdesk-inducing soundbites. Here are some of the bon mots thrown about during the first episode:

• "My design is edgy"
• "Avant-garde"
• "Experimental"
• "They call me the panty Christ"
• "I use heat-sensitive ink"
• "I used to design for strippers"
• "Creativity, construction, wearability, saleability"
• "Your man berries are hanging out"
• "I need some butter and a miracle to put that on"*
• "Our must-have item is going to be harem pants"

The Fashion Show [Bravo]

*Uttered, straight-faced, by Miss Kelly Rowland

Project Runway's move from Bravo to Lifetime prompted a year of lawsuits, which finally ended with a settlement last month. (Project Runway's sixth season will begin on Lifetime on August 20, and Bravo's ripoff of its own flagship series debuts tonight at 10 p.m.) The show follows the same basic concept as Project Runway, with 16 designers competing in a weekly challenge, fashion show, and elimination, but there are a few tweaks to the formula. The show is judged by designer Isaac Mizrahi, Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child, and Fern Mallis, a senior vice president of IMG Fashion who appeared as a guest judge on Project Runway. There will be one main challenge every week, in addition to a Harper's Bazaar Mini Challenge, judged by the magazine's Special Projects Director Laura Brown. Mizrahi and Rowland perform Tim Gunn's role in addition to hosting and judging, taking a tour of the work room during the challenges and offering their thoughts. The designers are competing for a chance to see their designs sold in a not-yet-named major retail store, and to win $125,000. A team of fashion insiders will vote on the runway show at the end of each episode, then the judges will decide who is eliminated. Viewers will vote on the final winner.

Critics say the judges don't have the chemistry of Heidi Klum, Nina Garcia, and Michael Kors. Unlike Tim Gunn, Isaac Mizrahi's comments are more mean than constructive and Kelly Rowland's fashion credentials are dubious. As for the contestants, it seems they were chosen because they fill certain Project Runway stereotypes, not because they are great designers. At the end of the first episode, one group of designers presents Hammer pants as a wardrobe staple, and Mizrahi tells the contestants, "you all let me down." Still, three months is a long time to wait for more Project Runway and The Fashion Show may help tide fans over. Below, the critics judge The Fashion Show.

Variety

Talk about a cheap knockoff. Bravo's look-alike replacement for Project Runway is what Christian Siriano would call a hot mess. By raiding the production closets of shows like The Biggest Loser, The Fashion Show attempts to jazz up the old business model with the idea of real life, real people, real fashion. Problem is, making the fashion more accessible also makes it a lot less, well, fashionable and, inevitably, much less fierce. There's just not that same level of drama when designing a standard blue blazer.

Even delightfully entertaining host Isaac Mizrahi seems slightly aghast at the designs, often unable to mask his horror. If Tim Gunn was diplomatic, Mizrahi is just melodramatic. His signature sign-off of "Bah-bye darling" seems rather harsh even by Heidi Klum's gruff, auf Wiedersehen standards. Still, he totally eclipses bland co-host Kelly Rowland, whose credentials in fashion seem rather nebulous. The two, along with Fern Mallis and a weekly guest judge, weigh fashion show votes to pick a winner and loser. Mallis, a popular judge from Runway, adds practical, relatable advice and some much-needed clout.

The L.A. Times

Hosts designer Isaac Mizrahi and singer Kelly Rowland (ex-Destiny's Child) are not exactly your new Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum. (Rowland's fashion credentials come from having looked at and worn a lot of it — and fair enough.) They are peppy where the Runway hosts were contained and tend to steal focus from the contestants. And unlike Gunn, whose role as disinterested mentor allowed him to love all players equally, Mizrahi is both an involved commentator and a judge, a mixing of duties of which I'm not sure I approve. (When Gunn was brought in as a substitute judge for last year's Runway finale, it seemed very wrong.)

The New York Times

Isaac Mizrahi is the host and lead judge instead of Heidi Klum, which is a little like giving the Grace Kelly role in To Catch a Thief to Rosie O'Donnell. There is no avuncular Tim Gunn acting as mentor to the 15 designers; instead Mr. Mizrahi and his co-host, Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny's Child, inspect the workroom where the designers are frantically cutting and basting. They don't hand out helpful tips or encouraging words; mainly they exchange eye rolls and dismissive comments. (Mr. Gunn's exhortation, "Make it work," became famous; Mr. Mizrahi leaves the room with a less inspiring motto, "Keep pluggin'.")

Mr. Mizrahi, who can be very funny as well as flamboyant, is mostly a scold here. Ms. Rowland is not exactly nurturing, either. "Is that supposed to be like that?" she asks Haven, 29, a contestant who is struggling with a misshapen fold on her blouse. "No, it's not supposed to be like that, Kelly," Haven replies, barely concealing a bristle.

Instead of acting as the mercurial designer's more tolerant foil, Ms. Rowland tries to keep up with Mr. Mizrahi's venom - without his verve.

The Hollywood Reporter

The show, the contestants and even the judges (who have almost no chemistry) are almost entirely without flair. Fashion plods through the paces but never seems to gather a real momentum, and there's little spontaneity or a true clash of creative wills: the contestants just seem to get on one another's nerves.

On the other hand, examining fashion with a more serious attitude leads to informative, interesting discussions. The runway segment of Fashion puts outfitted models on display before a room full of industry leaders, and producers seek out feedback from top names. During the runway examination, contestants provide a play-by-play on their fashions; later, when called on the carpet, they're articulate and insightful as to their design motivations and theories. In those moments, Fashion raises the bar for fashion reality.

The Washington Post

The show would be so much more hahaha, and so much more interesting, if we hadn't seen these contestants before. Merlin's costumes and smack-worthy comments seem far less outlandish when you realize he's pretty much just a Christian Siriano/Jay McCarroll hybrid. And Fashion's Kristin, with her flaky eco-inspired designs and what looks like a dreamcatcher in her hair — didn't Elisa and Sweet P (Runway Season 4) have that shtick covered? The contestants of Fashion sometimes act as though they auditioned not to be fashion designers on a reality show, but rather to fill the specific shoes left behind by Runway contestants. You can almost picture them backstage, doing rock-paper-scissors to determine which one of them will be "the offensive contestant," which one will be "the contestant who wears a headpiece bigger than Milwaukee."

The Chicago Sun-Times

Project Runway is ingenious at casting. Will we ever forget Santino? Christian Siriano? Or Kenley Collins, last season's finalist who was so combative that she has since been charged with throwing her cat at her ex?
Tough to top. But The Fashion Show just may do it. So far we have a men's underwear designer who calls himself "the pantychrist"; a Siriano look-alike who mumbles something about how he only works with squares and rectangles, and Merlin, who has an impenetrable accent, at least one red cat suit and a collection of astonishing hats. "The world is controlled by bitches, that's what I believe," says Merlin. I think.

The Daily News

Mizrahi also doesn't seem to be from the pep-talk school of hosting. At one point in tonight's show he informs the assembled group that "you all let me down." ... In Mizrahi's defense, tonight doesn't suggest these contestants are quite ready to revolutionize fashion. It doesn't take a professional to know that if a dress is so painfully tight even a wispy model can't comfortably wear it, it's probably not going to score in the shops. But as viewers, we're less interested in the destination than the ride, and this one starts out feeling like fun.

• Kate Moss has signed on with Virgin Books to pen a presumably un-virginal "no holds barred" autobiography. Says publisher Sir Richard Branson, "It's going to make an exciting read." [Telegraph]

• Jack McCollough, the Proenza Schouler designer allegedly head-butted by Kiefer Sutherland at the Met, isn't pointing fingers. Sort of. A statement from his camp: "Anyone who knows Jack McCollough knows that he would not hurt a fly. All we can say at this point is that he was the victim of a vicious, violent, unprovoked assault and that the matter is in the hands of the authorities." Please cue 24 joke. [ElleUK]
• A detente in the fabled War of the Nebbishes? Quoth Dov Charney, "I have deep respect for Mr. Allen, who is a source of inspiration to me." Oddly enough, Woody didn't release a similar statement of mutual admiration for Charney's jersey bodysuits [WWD]
• Charney then referenced Larry Flynt. [Gothamist]
• Tell us: would you listen to "Diesel Radio?" Would you admit it if you did? [ElleUK]
• So is the Met Costume Institute's "Model as Muse" exhibit worth the hype? Judging by what Cathy Horyn says, we're...not sure. "You're tempted to snap into one of those incredible bump-and-grind poses suggested by tiny amounts of Spandex and squeal, "Hey, girlfriend!"" [NYT]
• Some - including Mo'Nique - feel Michelle Obama is saving retail fashion. Retail fashion has not gotten the memo. [Time]
• Bucking the trend, L'Oreal's sales rose incrementally in the last quarter; because everyone's shopping drugstore? [WWD]
• And Hermes is up, too! Cross your fingers. [WWD]
• 16-year-old Katie Fogarty, of runway-fall fame, takes a philosophical attitude: "Oh whatever brightens people's days." [Teen Vogue via New York]
• Dig it: Levi's is launching the "Give Them Hope Now" campaign to raise money for New York's Harvey Milk School, the high school dedicated to LGBT and questioning students. [AdAge]
• On a completely unrelated note, Marshalls' attempt to appeal to the kids seems to appeal to no one. "A 35-year-old cross-dressing man named Liam Sullivan portrays Kelly, a shy 17-year-old girl. Kelly, a popular YouTube character, is first shown at home greeting her visiting grandma (also played by Sullivan, natch)." Then they go to Marshall's and there's a musical number involving a mime and some maraca-shaking. [BrandFreak]
• Oddly enough, Tim Gunn was not the only reality fashionisto on Capital Hill this week: Nigel Barker also betook his fine self to D.C. to film scenes for a pediatric AIDS documentary, raising the city's handsomeness quotient by 48%. [Politico]
• Agyness Deyn is hawking mineral water. This is, apparently, highly prestigious. [The Sun]
• Erykah Badu has designed a label for a special bottle of Kiehl's body lotion involving "a trippy swirl of Afro curls, butterflies and ferns." Proceeds go to the Waterkeeper Alliance. [Dallas News]
• Timberland is branching into women's footwear, introducing 12 styles of shoe. [WWD]
• Also snubbing the economy, Derek Lam opened a ritzy new store in SoHo yesterday; both Rihanna and Wintour showed. [The Fashion Informer]
• Stella McCartney and Net-a-Porter have entered into a "mutually exclusive" online sales relationship. Get those eBay-trained trigger fingers ready! [FabSugar]
• Isaac Mizrahi has crafted a (pretty cute) cocktail dress from USA Todays. USA Today likes this. [USA Today]
• Meanwhile, here's Isaac on The -it's-not-a-Project-Runway-ripoff-we-swear, The Fashion Show: "As a judge, I am looking first for integrity. I can't tell yet about niches that people will fit into, but we have to train them to think properly and then think about the marketplace aspect. The difference with our show from other shows is that we have an audience that votes every week and they say some brutal things." [Yahoo]
• Cat fight! Gucci's suing Guess?, claiming the denim chain's "G" is a knockoff of the luggage chain's "G." Or as they'd have it, 'slavishly replicating' their designs. [News.co.au]
• Stephanie Seymour's divorce from "polo-playing husband" Peter Brant is rough. Quoth the supermodel, "It's OK. I'm sleeping in the maid's quarters...I'm doing the best I can to keep things amicable. I want to be the bigger person. But it's tough. He's playing very dirty with me." Or so says a "friend." [NY Post]
• Damien Hirst's Levi's - the fabled "most expensive jeans in the world" - are, how you say, hideosity personified, also look like you could make them at home if you've hung onto your splatter-art machine from the 80's. [InventorSpot]

• Eva Mendes, along with male model Jamie Dornan, are confirmed as the fall faces of Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Underwear. Steven Klein shot the campaigns. [WWD]

• At last night's Met ball, seven models and one designer were conspicuously absent. Azzedine Alaïa, the diminutive Tunisian-born designer whose relationship with his models, particularly the mega-famous 80s/90s supes, is so deep that most of them call him "papa," was not asked to be part of the Met's exhibition, themed "The Model as Muse." Because, explains curator Harold Koda, he assumed, without even checking, that Alaïa would not want to be in the exhibit. Although Alaïa made and fitted dresses for models including Stephanie Seymour, Naomi Campbell (who has been his muse for 23 years), Veronica Webb, and Linda Evangelista to attend the exhibit opening, when he found out that none of his work would be represented at the museum, he asked all his models not to attend. Which they were more than happy to do. "Azzedine has made my dress for every single ball," said Seymour. "I will still make my donation to the Met, but I won't be going." Koda, ball organizer Anna Wintour, and co-chair Marc Jacobs, whose company is sponsoring the event, are all very sorry indeed that the designer who has perhaps the most enduring links of all with his model-muses will not be included in the show about designers, models, and muses. But none of them admit a whit of responsibility, which leads me to point out here, that Azzedine Alaïa, like Dries van Noten and a handful of other successful designers, doesn't produce campaigns. Armani and Versace, the two designers who dominate the 80s section of the exhibit, regularly lavish Vogue with their advertising dollars. [On The Runway & On The Runway]
• Of the event itself, the Times writes: "Asked how she felt about being a museum-worthy muse, Ms. Moss shrugged and pulled a big piece of gum out of her mouth. 'I'm amused,' she said. 'I think it's quite interesting for somebody to go outside of the box and think that a model actually has had some input into fashion. A lot of the time, the models don't really get a say.'" [NY Times]
• Significantly more enthusiastic was André Leon Talley, who, upon his first sighting of Moss, was heard to shriek "Goddess!" [WWD Twitter]
• Today, Chanel launches its new ad for its No. 5 perfume, a video by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, starring Audrey Tautou. In honor of the momentous occasion, the stretch of Fifth Avenue that borders Saks will be renamed "Avenue No 5" and the department store's windows will be dressed to celebrate the ad. [Racked]
• Jason Wu gives New York magazine a tour of the modest West 37th St. one-bedroom, decorated all in gray, that his family bought him after he moved to New York. The designer relaxes by cooking dinners for his friends. In between, he clears off the kitchen bench to design his FAO Schwartz range of dolls. [NYMag]
• Elle MacPherson's style icons are Steve McQueen and Katharine Hepburn. She also name-drops Banjo and Matilda cashmere, "an Australian brand," without specifying that it's owned by her brother and sister-in-law. [Independent]
• Marc Jacobs: "If you have five minutes free in New York, you're a failure. If you have five minutes free in Paris, you're a success." [Glamour]
• Stella McCartney has been making appearances at Barneys left and right; she's doing two more before the week is out. And her 23-piece collection for Net-a-porter goes on sale today. [WWD]
• Miuccia Prada loves her Carston Höller office slide, contemporary art, and Earl Grey tea. And being different. "I always want to be different, as a way to progress. At the beginning, I wanted to make a soft bag out of stiff leather. I wanted to make rich materials look poor, and poor materials look rich. Always there was something disturbing. In the end, that's probably why people like Prada." [Telegraph]
• American Apparel's witness list for its upcoming court date with Woody Allen includes Allen's ex, Mia Farrow, his current wife and Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, and Larry Flynt. [Reuters]
• Conflicting reports about Liz Claiborne today: while just last week Racked was reporting that, gee, an awful lot of the new Isaac Mizrahi-designed clothes seemed to be already needing heavy discounts on the website to move, today, Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to a "buy," partly due to the company's leaner inventories. Share prices rose 30%, to $6.46, following the news. [Crain's]
• In this economy, retailers are trying "positive thinking." Because it's all they have left! Ha ha, I'm kidding. But only a little. [WWD]
• Adidas needs to save 100 million Euros this year. To that end, it's closing regional offices in Europe and Asia, and has not ruled out shutting retail stores. [NY Times]
• J. Crew's children's line, Crewcuts, now has its own standalone catalog. [WWD]
• Estée Lauder's profits fell 70% in the third quarter, so now they're touting the brand as a good option for bargain-hunters. There'll be more free services at the cosmetics counter, and smaller-size products that'll be priced to scale. But probably still expensive. [WSJ]
• Kathy Ireland thinks the media obsession with women's bodies is ridiculous, and that the focus on how we look, as opposed to our health, is misdirected. Because bodies are for living in, not looking at. "Beautiful people come in all shapes and sizes, ages and colors," Ireland told Larry King. "With my weight gain, people wanted to know, Well, when is she going to squeeze back into a bikini? No. That is not what it's about. But what people weren't asking me [was], What's the triglyceride level? What is the C reactive protein?...Heart disease is the number one killer of women in America." [CNN]

• Marc Jacobs and his Brazilian fiancé, Lorenzo Martone, are set to marry next month in Provincetown. Also, Jacobs is taking the artists John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, plus Madonna, to the Met ball. [FWD]

• But Jesus Luz won't be in his fall Louis Vuitton campaign. "Why is everyone asking me about him? He's not modeling for me. I don't do menswear," said the designer. He did say, however, that Madonna and Steven Meisel are shooting the campaign right now, right here in New York. "She's the ultimate professional and she and Steven are amazing. I love working with her. There's no one better." [The Cut]
• Steven Alan, on this one time he opened a barbershop: "My mom was getting her haircut at this hairdresser's in the East Village, and the lady told her she was interested in opening her own salon, so my mom goes, 'Oh you should talk to my son!' And I'm like, 'Mom, I'm not opening a hair salon.' And she goes, well you should meet her anyway. So I met her and I was like, 'If I open anything it's going to be a barber shop,' and she was like, 'Ok, I can cut guys' hair.'" [Fashionista]
• Lanvin's Alber Elbaz — who seemed talented, fretful and difficult in Ariel Levy's recent New Yorker profile — is questioned by Stephanie Seymour in the new issue of Interview. "We really started from scratch eight years ago at Lanvin. It's the oldest couture house in the world, but when I came onboard, it was a great name without much in it. We slowly moved in. I love coffee, but I always say not everything has to be instant. We took the time. It took eight years to move from 15 accounts to 400 accounts. What's important is to maintain it as a family business. It's very much like Interview, which you don't talk about as a group-it's a family. The nature of fashion is family. You see that at almost every house-it was owned first by a family. It wasn't owned by a bank. In fact, the bankers went into fashion later...And look what happened to fashion!" [Interview]
• Alexander Wang, last year's Vogue CFDA fashion fund award-winner, is teaming up with the Gap. And unlike in previous years, where the CFDA designers re-imagined the retailer's white shirt — with mixed results — Wang has done something that sounds kind of exciting. Says Gap designer Patrick Robinson: "This year it's with khaki. He did this incredible motorcycle jacket in khaki that's going to be under $100. It's coming out on June 16th, so get ready!" [Fashionologie]
• Thinker of deep thoughts Michael Kors wishes there were some kind of Spanx for men. It exists, Michael! [The Cut]
• All that lobbying from the First Lady's favorite designers must have worked: a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House has reintroduced a modified version of the design piracy bill. [WWD]
• The ever-humble Isaac Mizrahi: "I just love women in dresses. Last night I was at an event at the Pier [in New York] and everyone looked just ugh ... except those wearing my clothes." [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• Soon, there will be Jessica Simpson lingerie. And sleepwear. Fantastic. [WWD]
• And Paris Hilton is doing sunglasses. [PopDirt]
• Anne Hathaway may not be doing the next Marc Jacobs campaign — but she looks good in her new ad for Lancôme perfume. [E! Online]
• WSJ. took Hilary Rhoda to Miami to shoot swimsuits, and shot this nifty behind-the-scenes video. No amount of overdubbed music can hide the fact that modeling is generally about making odd positions look natural. [WSJ]
• This list of the top 20 fashion Twitterers covers all the bases, but all you really need to know is: Fake. Karl. [Times of London]
• In a similar vein, Rachel Roy held a press conference via Twitter. She answered such hard-hitting lines of inquiry as, "Rachel, you absolutely glow! How do you stay confident through tough times?" Oh, the vaunted democracy of the Internet. [WWD]
• Revlon is launching a new mascara, and adding two items to its ColorStay product range. [WWD]
• Henri Bendel, the department store founded in 1895, is no longer going to sell clothes. The retailer will shrink its New York flagship by one floor, and concentrate only on selling accessories, beauty products, and gift items that leverage its brand and signature colors. Eight percent of its 250-strong workforce will be laid off. [NY Times]
• Timberland's profits declined 12% in the first quarter of this year. [WWD]
• Breaking: Tiffany & Co. has bought the bankrupt Lambertson Truex handbag brand from Samsonite. [WWD]
• Abercrombie & Fitch, meanwhile, is in its second round of layoffs this year. After making fifty workers at its Columbus, Ohio, headquarters in January, the company is letting go an addition 170 this week. [The Street]
• Joe's Jeans actually rose slightly in its sales and earnings for the first quarter. [WWD]
• The Gap is recalling 22,000 toggle coats for babies, up to size 24 months. The toggles can come off, and pose a choking risk. [Babble]

• 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]