• 80s supermodel-turned-businesswoman Elle MacPherson will star in the CW's Beautiful as an 80s supermodel-turned-businesswoman. The show revolves around models living in agency housing. It'll be MacPherson's first television gig since her stint on Friends. [THR]

• Barack Obama started wearing a Jorg Gray wristwatch instead of his Tag Heuer  and the private label, which had only been marketed on the corporate gifts market, promptly launched Barackswatch.com to make the best of the endorsement. Stay classy, Jorg Gray! [WWD]
• Robin Givhan, longtime Washington Post fashion critic, is departing New York City for Washington in order to cover the First Family beat. She'll still write a weekly column on fashion, but in her new surroundings, the scope will widen to include "politician[s] looking especially appalling." [WWD]
• Anna Wintour, who has always been a strong supporter of designer Olivier Theyskens, lashes out at Puig fashion group in her April editor's letter. Puig fired Theyskens before his contract with the house of Nina Ricci was even up. Of course, Wintour's support doesn't mean Theyskens will automatically ascend to a similarly good position: Phoebe Philo, who left Chloé in 2005, has always enjoyed Wintour's good graces, and she's only just about to settle into a design role at Celine now. [FWD]
• Jessica Joffe is going to be in Katy Rodriguez's fall campaign. [Vogue UK]
• Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond, Jr., they of the Vogue Valentine's Day photo spread, are no longer an item. [Daily Intel]
• Is it still news to anyone that editorial work is not remotely remunerative? Here is yet another industry person, Betty Sze of Models.com, to give the good word about the bad pay. Condé Nast, says Sze, pays new models about $150 a day, and more experienced girls can expect to net about $250. Those rates actually set the curve for editorial pay in the rest of the industry: three of the last half-dozen eds I've done didn't pay at all. I will say this of Condé Nast: if one of their titles is shooting you in an out-of-the-way location, unlike other media conglomerates, they send a car to take you to the airport. Which is rad, because LIRR and MTA are two acronyms you do not want on your mind when you're trying to make a 7 a.m. departure at Kennedy airport, and dropping $100 on cabs to take you to and from a job that's gonna pay $200 (after your agency's cut, when you get paid in three months, if other expenses your agency assesses in the meantime don't eat it up entirely) makes no sense. The idea is to do editorials to work with good photographers and generate enough buzz to book campaigns (or, at least, catalogs) but that second, crucial step to financial solvency is a lot tougher than anyone makes it sound. [Fashionologie]
• Collabs between designers and mass-market retailers are on the rise this season  I'll give you one guess as to why. (Starts with "R"!) [WWD]
• Urban Outfitters has been unveiling an unusual number of collaborations, particularly with lesser known, cutting-edge designers, this season. But that didn't stop their design team ripping off a sandal design by Hayden Harnett. They even copied the name. The New York designers called their shoe the "Camille"  Urban's offering is the "Camilla." [Fashionista]
• Palm Beach's retail environment is struggling under the twin curses of Bernard Madoff and The Recession. [WWD]
• Lakme fashion week in Mumbai has a bunch of designers  and a Barbie-themed show. Because what world fashion week is complete without that? [FWD]
• The Lauren Conrad Collection is no more. Funny to think that you couldn't sell an entire line of boring jersey dresses produced by a girl whose claim to fame is playing herself on television in this economy. [P6]
• In somewhat more disappointing news of reality star fashion projects, House of Harlow, Nicole Richie's jewelry line, sold out online before it even reached stores. Alas, she plans an empire: "I'm focusing on my brand right now. There will be a maternity line, a clothing line, shoes, belts, everything!" [People]

This month, Joffe co-stars with socialites Maggie Betts and Poppy Delevingne (in a funny coincidence, also February Vogue's It Girl) in that staple of money-saving, fun-having belt-tightenry, the clothing swap party. And while you may know the clothing swap party as a place where a mountain of unflattering and unwanted garb collapses to form a black hole of self-loathing and veiled body snark, the Joffe-Betts-Delevingne edition is full of delicious, high-fashion fun. A Thakoon dress changes hands! A Lizzie Fortunato necklace! An Azrouel vest! Dinner is served  Joffe points out that "there aren't any boys coming  should we have garlic bread?" But these faux-recessionistas prudently eschew the extra carbs. Instead, they content themselves with their feelings of virtuousness, what stylist Sophia Hesketh calls "the economy and the ecology" of the swap party itself.

A few pages later, Plum Sykes details her response to the recession: building a "Forever wardrobe," starting with two outfits for . . .

the one weekend a year when my husband and I entertain. (Believe me, it is only once a year, downturn or not.) Every fall my husband takes a day's partridge shooting on gallerist Detmar Blow's Hilles estate in Gloucestershire, England [...] The dress code is nonnegotiable: tweeds for day and grand dress for dinner.

Sykes goes on to purchase a tweed suit and Giambattista Valli dress for a total of $8,515, or, converted to normal-people dollars, a "buttload." Still, there's something kind of endearing about the whole escapade. It's when really rich people economize (and yes, we do get that there's a difference between a $4,600 dress that you'll wear again and a $64,000 fur coat dipped in gold) that we see how very much they will never be like us. And how much Vogue, despite its (so far, sorta half-hearted) efforts, will never really be about normal people or their concerns. So happy shooting, Plum! We'd like to close with an observation by your buddy Gwyneth Paltrow, herself a noted supporter of the proletariat: "I find it hilarious that in America, at dinner in the country, you're in sweatpants and cashmere, but in England you bust out your couture." Gwyneth Paltrow, ladies and gentlemen: even in these trying times, she always knows how to make us laugh.

As the first personal style discovery platform, StyleCaster provides members with creative and stylistic inspiration, as well as real world utility. Every day, millions of people wake up and ask, "What is the weather? What should I wear?" Until now, no platform has addressed these questions.

Hahahaha! I don't know about you, but I get my weather from the bottom lefthand corner of the TV or from the "Dashboard" on my Mac; the "what should I wear?" question I've been answering for myself since age 7 or 8.

Look: I get that magazines can be boring, static and rigid, and that the web allows you to make fashion come to life  film's been tried by Prada and Louis Vuitton. But so far, the "films" on StyleCaster  which credit the director, stylists, hair stylists and make-up artists  seem pointless. Boring, even. Fashion may be frivolous, but isn't it supposed to be fun? I dare you to watch StyleCaster's safe, manufactured chic and not have your eyes glaze over.

StyleCaster lets models loose on the streets [AdFreak]
StyleCaster [Offcial Site]
Earlier: Let's All Take Acid And Watch The New Prada Movie
The New Prada Movie Stars Very Shady Characters
Another Luxury Brand, Another Existential Film