• Gwyneth Paltrow's clothing line with Zoetees is hitting stores this month. The collection includes tee shirts, studded tank tops, and a grey oversized blazer — fine basics, but there's no indication why the line should start at £100. [Elle UK]

• Earlier this year, Katy Perry, desirous of a fashion line, pre-emptively sued the Australian fashion designer Katie Perry for trademark infringement. Although the suit was later dropped, now that the pop star is in Australia, all mention of Katie Perry and the trademark issue is verboten during media interviews. Which is why when a television presenter asked the singer if there were any Australian artists she admired, Perry's manager actually killed the studio lights. [News.com.au]
• The tender melancholy of Being Donatella: "I would definitely prefer not to be obliged to attend certain events and parties, but I must." [ToL]
• Being longtime fans of documentarian Loïc Prigent — the man who made both the excellent Signé Chanel and Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton — we cannot wait to watch his new series, which follows four designers during the last 36 hours before their respective shows. Sonia Rykiel, Proenza Schouler, Jean Paul Gaultier Couture, and Fendi are featured; Prigent says "They only have 36 hours left; they don't have time to be polite." [W]
• Gaultier was among the guests evacuated from a hotel in Nice recently following a bomb threat. Nobody was injured and no explosives were found. [Yahoo!]
• Rachel Zoe's line for QVC will be shown in the biggest tent at New York Fashion Week. [The Cut]
• Between The Rachel Zoe Project, America's Next Top Model, Project Runway, Models Of The Runway, Project Runway All-Stars, The Fashion Show, and the upcoming Launch My Line, there's more fashion-themed reality television than any human being could ever watch. Is the genre reaching saturation? No, because women think about fashion the way men think about sports, and it would be silly to ask if there is too many sports shows! No, really: "The same way that sports is a passionate category for men, women look at style in the same way," said Style Network president Salaam Coleman Smith. "Women are passionate about transformation, and about ideas for living a fun, fabulous life, to improve themselves, find a new lipstick and figure out a new haircut." [WWD]
• Zoe, for her part, admits she has "a hard time" watching her show. That makes two of us. [WWD]
• Victoria Beckham found a lookbook model for her dress line who looks very much like Victoria Beckham. [Daily Mail]
• Hussein Chalayan's line for Puma looks exciting, intimidating, and totally technophiliac. [WWD]
• Pint-sized and cooler than we'll ever be, child style blogger Tavi WIlliams may have made the first cover of Pop magazine to be produced under new editor Dasha Zhukova. Interestingly, Tavi was just in the second issue of Love, which was founded by ex-Pop editor-in-chief Katie Grand. These are Tavi's first major magazine appearances. [Fashionologie]
• Meanwhile, Tavi was asked by Laura and Kate Mulleavy of Rodarte to film the presentation of the label's upcoming Target collaboration. None of the items in that collection will be priced above $80. [Lucky]
  
• Add Antonio Berardi and Stella McCartney for Adidas to the long list of English designers beating a return to London Fashion Week this season. [Telegraph]
• Cintra Wilson — the ordinarily funny writer who penned that amazingly tone-deaf, sizist JC Penney's store review for the New York Times — would like you to know that the controversy over her comments is officially over. At least to her. So don't write her about it! Don't read the comments under her post if you don't want to hear Wilson and an acolyte braying about the "whalesong" of complaint. [CintraWilson]
• House of Dereon now has a day dress collection. Weirdly, it includes an awful looking silk drawstring-waist jumpsuit. [WWD]
• You can watch an online short with Chloé Sevigny all about hip boutique Opening Ceremony's new store in Shibuya, Tokyo. [Dazed&Confused]
• Levi's Ryan McGinley-shot "Go Forth" ad campaign for its 501 jeans also has an online mockumentary component. You can watch these "Stories Of A New America" about good-looking young people doing cool things, you know, totally spontaneously, at Break.com. [MW]
• Kenny Chesney's apparel line will launch at MAGIC, the Las Vegas apparel industry event. [WWD]

• 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]

• Leighton Meester made the September cover of Harper's Bazaar, and inside the magazine printed digitally-altered photos of the actress, intended to show how she will age. At 23, Meester is already a supporter of Botox. [WWD]

• Three little words: Rodarte for Target. This December. Fashionistas all over this country are going to be wetting themselves and there aren't even any pictures yet. [WWD]
• In terms of irrepressibly stupid shit, $450 Louis Vuitton chopsticks pretty much takes the sushi. [FWD]
• Nicole Richie, on her new maternity line for A Pea In The Pod: "You really feel like you have to change your whole wardrobe. And that's the last thing a woman wants to go through. So I really tried to make this line to get women excited about wearing clothes." [People]
• Somebody put photos of Alexander McQueen's former London home on the Internet. Creepy. [SB]
• Add this to the mounting pile of reasons to give London Fashion Week a look this season: a photographic exhibition dedicated to Twiggy will open on September 19, the same day as the shows, at the National Portrait Gallery. Twiggy turns 60 this year. [Telegraph]
• 18-year-old American model Ali Stephens, who still dreams of being a marine biologist, struggles to balance her education with her work schedule. "Being in school got hard because I was never there. I switched to online schooling, but that didn't work either because I never had time to do it. When I was working I couldn't do it, and when I wasn't working, I just wanted to relax. It was hard to motivate. So right now I'm studying for my GED. I'm going to take it before fashion week." [W]
• Milla Jovovich, on life's greatest pleasure, reading: "Recently I read all Edith Wharton's classics and I re-read all of Dickens. I love books about turn-of-the-century New York. I just finished Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets by Stephen Crane. I had a phase of reading books about 'new physics' and I love to read Scientific American and New Scientist magazines. I read so much I am like a zombie in the morning." [Daily Mail]
• Princess Grace of Monaco and Cartier are getting stars on the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style. [WWD]
• Roberto Cavalli, you tease! The Italian designer, who for most of this year has toyed with the idea of selling a stake in his fashion house, and released many contradictory statements on the subject, finally committed to sell — but he has now allowed talks to break down with Clessidra SpA. The private equity firm that had wanted to buy a 30% stake in his company was apparently disappointed by the designer's reluctance to negotiate on his high price. [WWD]
• Tommy and Dee Hilfiger are now parents to a baby boy, Sebastian Thomas, born yesterday. Congratulations to them. [WWD]
• Katie Grand's second issue of Love magazine features Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. What? [Fashionologie]
• Kanye West is in New York today to fête Casio G-shock watches. The brand is launching new timepieces designed by Redman, Mister Cartoon, and Todd Jordan — but none from Kanye, yet. [WWD]
• Although the African Growth and Opportunity Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 2000, was intended to offer certain sub-Saharan African companies a break on U.S. trade tariffs to encourage African countries to diversify their economies and manufacturing bases, nearly a decade on, 92% of trade done under the act is in petroleum products. And in Kenya, where apparel manufacture had been a growth industry until this recession began, most of the factories that produce clothing for export under the act are owned by American and Chinese companies. Kenya's apparel sector still employs 26,000 people, and their working conditions are governed by the act, which sets limits on work hours, mandates overtime payments, and bans child labor. [LATimes]
• Urban Outfitters' $24 knockoff of the 3 Moon Wolf tee is imported — but we'll wager not from Kenya. Which means that the t-shirt makers, New Hampshire company The Mountain, and the original artist, Antonia Neshev, probably aren't being paid for their work. Urban Outfitters rips off pretty much everyone, but it's sad to see them kicking around a company that uses environmentally-friendly inks and provides on-site daycare for its employees. Strangely, Urban Outfitters seems to be banking both on the shirt's notoriety, and on its customers not being able to use a computer to navigate to the Amazon sales page, where the original 3 Wolf Moon tee is for sale starting at just $11. [FishbowlLA]
• Iconix Brand Group, which owns everything from Candie's to Badgley Mischka, reports a 32% rise in second quarter profit, to $19.3 million. [Crains]
• Polo Ralph Lauren's first quarter profit dropped 19%. [WSJ]
• Gucci is going to open a traveling pop-up store, to hopefully sell some sneakers Mark Ronson designed at Art Basel Miami and other wealthy world hotspots. [WWD]
• Torrid's holding a model search — so if you or someone you know is a size 12-26 and really, really, ridiculously good-looking, send in some pictures! Deadline's Friday, so act quick. [Torrid]

• Unlike her husband, who plans on doing zero promotional work for his Adidas line, Victoria Beckham is in New York to unveil a new 20 ft Emporio Armani ad at Macy's. [UPI]

• Posh is also expanding her fashion reach, manufacturing her dVb jeans in-house in London, and signing a new sunglasses deal with maker Cutler & Gross. [WWD]
• Around 200 people waited on the street for Michelle Obama to emerge from the US mission to the UN on Tuesday. The First Lady wore the same Tracy Feith dress she wore to a post-inaugural prayer breakfast in January. [WWD]
• Three words: Target. Anna. Sui. [WWD]
• Did Kate Moss really refuse to shake Agyness Deyn's hand in the receiving line at the Met ball on Monday? [Racked]
• And did Gisele Bundchen and Bar Refaeli — ex- and current girlfriend, respectively, of Leonardo DiCaprio — have a frosty encounter at the end of the night? That sounds kind of like the last party I went to, only it was on a tiny fire escape, not at the Temple of Dendur, and the awkward partner-in-common pairing was male, not female, and, oh yeah, nobody was wearing Versace. [The Observer]
• Madonna apparently says Jesus Luz's name in the Lamb of God pronunciation, not the From South America pronunciation. [WWD]
• Dasha Zhukova, a socialite who took over Katie Grand's job at Pop despite having no editorial experience, said at Rodarte's Met afterparty, "Are we in a basement? Because this is the chicest underground party I've been to. Literally, underground." The venue, the SubMercer, is indeed underground. Well done, Dasha. [Style.com]
• Pierre Cardin was hospitalized in Marseille after a fainting episode earlier this week. He is expected to be discharged today. What, you wonder, does Pierre Cardin amuse himself with in his twilight years? Why, the meticulous restoration of the chateau of the Marquis de Sade. [AP]
• The new issue of Worldwide Women's Wear Digest is out, for anyone who tires of fashion's efforts at self-parody. [WWWD]
• Simon Doonan of Barneys asked Stella McCartney what the deal is with her and jumpsuits when the designer made an appearance at the store in New York. "I love them because they're just so effortless," McCartney replied. She then mentioned that at the Met ball, to which she wore a jumpsuit, she required the assistance of a friend every time she needed to use the rest room. Effortless, indeed. [Fashionista]
• Barneys, meanwhile, is said to be looking to close two of its seven stores, including the one it opened just last year in Las Vegas. Rumors have flown as of late about the luxury retailer's troubles. [WSJ]
• Designer Antonio Berardi says it took three attempts to be accepted at Central St. Martins, England's top fashion school — but not because his work wasn't up to scratch (he was already working in John Galliano's atelier). "I was 18 stone [252 lbs] and people didn't really see me, even in class. And, then, all of a sudden it changed and that was equally weird." [Telegraph]
• Anya Hindmarch's London Pont St. store was burglarized on Monday, and the thieves made off with just under $70,000 worth of spring and summer stock. It is the sixth time Hindmarch's stores have been targeted. You might think she'd beef up security, no? [Vogue UK]
• In a surprise move, the bankrupt Filene's Basement chain will not be liquidated by its new owners. The much-beloved designer discounter, which sells unwanted end-of-season wares from department stores at significantly lower prices, found its business fell off as high-end department stores scrambling for customers practically matched Filene's level of discounting. But the new owners, Crown Acquisitions and the Chetrit Group, who picked up the chain for only $22 million, plan to inject $25 million into inventory and marketing. Their focus will be on what they see as Filene's Basement's core customer — city-dwellers looking for a bargain. "The weakest stores they had were in the suburbs," explained the head of Crown Acquisitions. [NY Post]
• A French e-tailer is allowing users to buy items from its site for any sum they wish — so long as it's over 1 Euro and they order a maximum of two. Since this is a recession, and all. [Reuters]
• Olivier Theyskens says all that talk about him becoming creative director of Halston, now that he's been let go from Nina Ricci, is just rumors. [The Cut]
• Serena Williams did three hours on the Home Shopping Network and moved 25,000 units of her clothing and accessories. Not bad for an afternoon's work. [PR Newswire]
• Marks & Spencer, Britain's biggest lingerie retailer, has decided that all you ladies with curves should pay an extra £2 for the privilege of wearing anything larger than their D-sized bras. [Daily Mail]
• Model Katie Fogarty, on Internet folks watching videos of her fall on the Prada runway: "Whatever lightens people's days!" We're glad she sees it as a no harm, no foul situation. (And we're especially glad Fogarty didn't actually come to any harm during that mishap.) [Teen Vogue]
• True Religion jeans reported a 10% jump in earnings for the first quarter of this year, on the back of a 19% iincrease in sales. [The Street]
• Steve Madden's earnings for the same period jumped 68%. Profits were $6.6 million. [WWD]
• Kenneth Cole lost $8.2 million in the same quarter. Sales decreased by 16%. [The Street]

• Is former overweight person and current size-o-phobe Karl Lagerfeld changing his Hedi Slimane stripes? Beth Ditto, who in addition to being very talented, weighs somewhat more than 100 lbs, is playing a Fendi party. [FWD]

• Agyness Deyn's 17-year-old sister Emily is starting a t-shirt company with a chum named Aliyah Hussein. Their first offerings feature images of the girls' icon, Queen Elizabeth II, whom Emily called "the original gangster!" [Blackbook via Nylon]
• I have no idea why this writer seems to think female models all have drivers — that might be true of the dozen top girls who walk in every show, but, trust me, the rest of us ride public transport. But it is correct that even the top-earning male models are always paid significantly less than their female counterparts. Russian Matvey Lykov, for instance, walked 34 shows in Europe, and only made enough to buy a ticket to the Dominican Republic to relax for a spell afterwards. [LA Times]
• And the indignities just don't stop: Doutzen Kroes, the model and Victoria's Secret angel, was treated to a super-original pick-up line on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. At a bar called Tantra, a drunk stranger cooed, "I thought you couldn't go out without your wings." Barf. [NYDN]
• The Daily News also has this horrific model blind item: "Which top model's plastic surgeon is in big trouble? He accidentally spilled acid on her chest while they were having sex in his office." That, right there, is fodder for nightmares. [NYDN]
• Caroline Trentini, the elfin, freckled Brazilian whom Anna Wintour puts in every issue of Vogue, has been less omnipresent this show season. In fact, people were wondering where she was — models of her caliber don't normally just skip the shows. Well, mystery solved! She was on exclusive for Yves Saint Laurent, whose show she closed just yesterday. [Fashionista]
• More forthcoming about his schedule is Valentino. The retired Italian designer has announced he'll be in New York on March 17 to tape an episode of The Martha Stewart Show, just ahead of the theatrical release the documentary modestly titled Valentino: The Last Emperor. I hope they bake amazing cookies, or do collage in tones of red together. [The Cut]
• According to Women's Wear Daily's "sources" — who can be pretty spot on about these things — Halston is sizing up the London designer Marios Schwab to become their new creative director. The revived Halston has struggled, and is still trying to replace Marco Zanini, the designer they let go after just two seasons last year. [WWD]
• Cathy Horyn, whose life is more fun than your own, describes what it's like to run into the people she's savaged ("I said hey to Anna...") and then hangs out with Karl Lagerfeld on his doorstep on the eve of the Chanel show. [On The Runway]
• Jil Sander might be back. After being dumped from her namesake label — and then begged to return, and then fired again — following its purchase by Prada, Sander has been a fashion orphan. Attending an industry textiles fair might mean she has a new project. Or it might not. [WWD]
• Feministing is surprised an article in H&M's in-store magazine on dressing like a tomboy ignored any hint of a queer perspective — despite using Samantha Ronson as one of its examples. Remember, girlie, it's OK to steal from your boyfriend, just remember to add that feminine touch! [Feministing]
• Beth Ditto, meanwhile, is enjoying her first fashion week in Paris. Coming off her cover spot in the first issue of Katie Grand's Love magazine, the Gossip songstress has the keys to the carrousel du louvre. And mark no fear of queer connotations on her part: Ditto's favorite thing about the Jean Paul Gaultier show was "the butch clothes! I mean that in the best way. Masculine is hot!" [FWD]
• Three different women designers — get this — respond differently to the question of how to clothe, and by extension, represent, the female body. Imagine, there's not a 1:1 correlation between being female and making feminine clothing! [International Herald-Tribune]
• Buyers at Paris fashion week aren't sure exactly what consumers are going to want to own in six months. Handbags are a sure bet in the Middle East, says one, because they can be toted freely in public despite women's clothing restrictions. Russians will still want to buy, well, everything, says a buyer for one boutique. London might be about jewelry and scarves; Paris stores aren't sure whether to under-order for a fall in demand, or bet on a surprise recovery. Left unsaid is the fact that almost nobody in retail could stand to see a repeat of last fall's choked-off sales. [Reuters]
• American Apparel, which had to recently renegotiate costly new financing of both their $75 million Bank of America revolving credit line and their $51 million loan from private equity group SOF Investments, now is approaching the March 21 deadline for both loans. [WWD]
• L.L. Bean's revenues were down $1.5 billion, or 7.8%, over the last financial year. The company expects to be making layoffs. [The Street]
• The Italian brand Tod's finished out a difficult year with enough money to give $1,700+ bonuses to all its employees, including the people who make their goods in Italy. [WWD]
• A small American fashion brand that sells its wares in France reportedly included the message "We are sorry that our president is an idiot, we did not vote for him" on the care tag. Obviously they meant Bush. Reminds one of how the teenaged Alexander McQueen stitched "I am a cunt" onto the interlining of a suit for Prince Charles when he was apprenticed to Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard. [InventorSpot]

• Candie's decided to take a chance on Britney Spears, and her cohort of current fans. The singer is the latest face of the tween-friendly brand. [WWD]

• Hello, viral marketing! There's already a "behind-the-scenes" vid of Ms. Spears shooting looks for the Candie's campaign, but, slightly more interestingly, it includes rehearsal footage featuring Spears in what are presumably those DSquared costumes we just heard about. There's a cool big-shouldered red jacket with swinging black fringe on the epaulettes. [PopSugar]
• Here's some news to make it worth getting up in the morning: Tom Ford, who has said in the past that he wants to do women's wear with his eponymous label, might be re-hiring Alessandra Facchinetti as head designer for the ladies' stuff. Facchinetti was Ford's women's wear point person when he was at Gucci, and she succeeded him when he left the company. But Facchinetti was fired from her position after just two seasons, and she was unceremoniously dumped from her next position, as creative director at Valentino, after just a few months in charge as well. Facchinetti is a talented designer, but maybe it takes Ford to get the best work from her? Let's hope this rumor proves true. [The Cut]
• Uniqlo had its fourth straight month of improving same-store sales, even in the midst of this recession. Same-store sales were up 4.2% in February, mainly on the back of increased patronage, since per-customer sales didn't rise significantly. [WWD]
• Also demonstrating that retail isn't entirely a scorched-earth zone these days, albeit more tentatively, is Claire's. Although their fourth-quarter results are still bad, their same-store sales rose in January and crossed into positive numbers last month. [WWD]
• This month, Forever 21 is launching a new plus-size range, called Faith 21. (The company is run by weird fundamentalist Christians, which pretty much explains the name.) [LA Times]
• Chanel, on the other hand, is closing two of its Japanese stores, and Chopard is having layoffs. [WWD]
• Jennifer Connelly wears Balenciaga in her Revlon ads, shot at Milk studios in New York. In this video, she talks about beauty. [Style.com]
• Freida Pinto might be a pick for an Estée Lauder contract. [WWD]
• Pharrell Williams, whose fashion interests already include Ice Cream and the Billionaire Boys Club, bought an interest in an ecologically sensitive yarn company in December. Which W decided to write about, now. For some reason. [W]
• Marc Jacobs donated a signed iPod to charity and we might as well pretend for the fun of it that his song list offers unexpected insights into his personality. What kind of man mixes Leonard Cohen and Lady Gaga? And then polishes the lot off with "No Scrubs" by TLC? It's fun to imagine Jacobs mouthing, "No, I don't want your number/No, I don't wanna give you mine/I don't wanna meet you nowhere/I don't want none of your time!" while sketching blouses for his collections or something. Oh, and for one last piece of Britney news: her iPod only fetched $801 at auction. [Unbeige]
• The difference between Anna Wintour, who has the dusty feel of a fashion institution these days, and Carine Roitfeld, who gives the impression she just might have a dust rag on or about her person, couldn't be more aptly underscored by the difference in the camera crews they attract. Wintour, editor of American Vogue, is to be the subject of a 60 minutes piece by Morley Safer, who first came to acclaim for his Vietnam coverage. Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue, gets something on CNN Revealed, which will almost certainly be cooler, hipper, and better, since it's cable and Carine and all. [The Cut]
• Katie Grand's Love magazine is either sold out of its 67,000 print run, and therefore fastest-selling debut magazine for Condé Nast UK ever, or it's just a lot of creative hype and there are in fact copies all over the place in Britain, depending on whether you believe Love magazine, or a bunch of anonymous Fashionista commenters. [Fashionista]
• Ever flip through a J. Crew catalog and think, 'Wow! These people clearly are a bunch of insurgent creatives, introducing mad art and design to chinos and pastels.' The impression will only be confirmed by Alex Katz's turn as a model for their spring catalog and in-store displays. Katz, 81 years young, is a Big Deal in American painting. [Unbeige]

Love, Condé Nast's new great white hope of a recession-era fashion mag, is Big News, as is its editor, Katie Grand, who's been a major fashion insider for years. Clearly, she's got serious chops. Which the Times gets around to after discussing her "fittingly high-pitched, cartoonlike squeak," the forementioned bag fetish, the stuffed guinea pig on the couch, and her getup: "Paper Denim & Cloth jeans, a vintage Sigue Sigue Sputnik T-shirt, a Chanel blanket wrapped as a scarf and glittery Miu Miu heels."

We get it: this is fashion journalism, and obviously this is a fashion writer, and to a degree, the disconnect between the launch of a very big gamble and such cute trivia probably doesn't seem as manifest to them as to the casual reader. Yes, we get that Grand, a major stylist, has worked with Prada, collaborates with Marc, dated Giles Deacon, hangs with Agyness and has worked her share of frivolously outré projects. But opening with that bag line does quite a bit to distract from concrete statements like, "‘It's very easy to be cool and self-indulgent,'' she said. ‘‘I think as an editor you have a responsibility to do an interesting, commercial magazine that people want to look at. We need a readership as well as advertisers,'' or,
"with the economy as it is, I wanted to do something that was a reality check on many levels.''

What that constitutes to a consummate fashionista, of course, is an open question. She says at one point,
‘‘They basically said, ‘Do whatever you want.' The fact that we have Beth Ditto naked on the cover shows that.'' Beth Ditto, nude, should not in itself be regarded as a piece of outrageous high-fashion performance art; challenging convention is very different from challenging conventions of beauty. And it's hard to get a sense, from this piece, of exactly what the magazine will be: "edgy," we're told, and involving a lot of her "favorite" personalities, but between the indulgent anecdotes about hats that resemble "an evening bathing cap," it's hard to say whether the insidery nature of Grand's career makes her better or worse suited to guaging the commercial marketplace. Certainly there's a lot to admire - and we like the stories of Grand's "earning money by knitting, mostly for other students, and writing knitting patterns for British Elle" while in school - but as evinced by the very tone of this profile, the demands of a resolutely fashion-centric world can be alienating to the rest of us when the chips are down. There's escapism, and then there's tone-deafness. We'll have to wait and see which Love is, because "Love Child" certainly isn't going to tell us.

Love Child [T Style]

Cool pictures. Interesting photography. Strong images, a visual language in which a short story is told without words. No "thin thighs fast" or scrunchie-oriented sex tips. Just wacky, irreverent, romantic or intriguing eye candy.
The spreads seem designed to be ripped out and hung on your wall.





Love is edited by Katie Grand, whom the Independent calls "the London über-stylist." Grand formerly edited Pop (in 2005, an article claimed that one fashion insider said Pop was "so hip it makes Anna Wintour tremble"). Before that, Grand worked as a stylist for The Face.
While Pop and The Face of these magazines were steeped in fashion, neither publication took itself too seriously; it was about the joy that comes from playing with clothes, with images. And as the first images trickle out of Love, my first thoughts are: It looks fun. Not overly prim, predictable, posed fun like the jumping models seen month after month in Vogue, but spontaneous, silly, with a joie de vivre that seems missing from most American ladymags.

Though I haven't gotten my hands on an issue (yet), so far my one complaint about Love is that it's bi. As in biannual. Who only gives love twice a year?


Love Pages [Mag Culture]
Love Magazine [Hapsical]
Fashion: Can you feel the LOVE? [Independent]
Related: Katie Grand: She's Popping Out [Hint]
Earlier: Ditto Or Deyn

• Dita Von Teese wears two Elie Saab couture creations in her limited-run Paris show. Is it strange that the only people who can afford couture these days are burlesque artists and Saudi princesses? [IHT]

• Fashion week is "hitting the reset button" because in this economic climate, return on investment is ever more important. [WWD]
• And don't expect any parties. Really. [WWD]
• The show schedule is now available online. [The Cut]
• Christian Siriano will be there, in the Salon at the tents, showing his new collection for Payless. Which is good news because at $25-$45 for bags and shoes inspired by Egyptology, these are that rare affordable fashion week thing. [WWD]
• Interesting: Richie Rich, everyone's favorite glittering ex-club kid, is showing on February 18. At no less a venue than the Waldorf Astoria, demonstrating once and for all that his particular brand of sparkle can exist above 23rd St. There hasn't been much heard of Rich since the end of his old label, Heatherette, which he ran with Traver Rains. [The Cut]
• Rich is promising "Head-to-toe wearable" for his namesake collection. Wonder how this'll shake out. [WWD]
• Isaac Mizrahi already showed his fall/winter collection for Liz Claiborne. It looks good, and involves something called "Kaleidoplaid." [Style.com]
• And the re-re-animated Halston is forgoing a show in favor of a video it's going to e-mail to editors and buyers on Saturday. [WWD]
• PETA's also gearing up for its favorite parasitic marketing opportunity of the year. Giorgio Armani, who stopped using all fur except for, it claims, rabbit pelts left over from the meat industry, recently drew the pressure group's ire and his New York flagship store will be picketed. [NYDN]
• Jason Wu, the American Vogue cover getting, Michelle Obama outfitting, 26-year-old fashion superstar, is to be sold on Net-A-Porter.com. [UK Elle]
• New York Magazine has 10 models to watch this season, you know, just some real new faces like that girl who walked for Marc Jacobs that one time and that girl in the current Prada campaign. [The Cut]
• Finally, a fashion magazine for the girls who smoke cigarettes behind the parking lot at school and could tell a Steven Meisel from a Steven Klein at 50 paces before entering their teens. Carine Roitfeld, editor-in-chief of French Vogue, is rumored to be assembling a team to launch a biannual teen fashion magazine. French Teen Vogue! Ooh la la. [FWD]
• Chanel Iman is supposedly to have a walk-on part on Gossip Girl as a guest at one of Serena's parties. A tipster reports she ate macaroni and cheese for lunch. (Chanel's still at that age where you can eat anything and not gain an ounce. Sigh.) [Daily Intel]
• Emma Roberts, Julia's niece, is another new face of Neutrogena. [WWD]
• Lorenzo Martone, Marc Jacobs' boyfriend of 11 months, seems like a charming romantic. "Valentine's Day is two days before his show, it has to be very quiet, but I'm still planning a little surprise," says the Brazilian. "During the last Vuitton show in Paris, I didn't tell him I was going to go — I just showed up in Paris in his office with flowers as a surprise the day before the show. He was totally, totally surprised. It was really, really good to see his reaction, and I don't know — we are so in love that it was really gorgeous to see his eyes." My heart, it's melting now. [The Cut]
• Two acts who grew up in Illinois, Liz Phair and OK Go!, are among the musicians featured in Banana Republic's New York-themed spring campaign, which will be out on February 18. [Brand Week]
• The "Got Milk?" campaign is the latest concern to drop alleged domestic abuser Chris Brown from its roster. Cover Girl says it's standing by Rihanna. [E! Online]
• Jones Apparel Group posted a slightly smaller-than-expected quarterly loss of 4 cents a share. (Analysts had expected 5 cents.) Revenues for the company even rose, by 1%, to $846.9 million. Let us all cheer not-bad fashion business news! [NY Times]
• Nike is cutting 4% of its 35,000-strong workforce. [WWD]
• Bob Marley's family has licensed his image and name, along with catchphrases like "Catch a fire" and "One Love" to the company Hilco Consumer Capital, which paid some $20 million in the deal. Hilco already owns Ellen Tracy and Linens 'n' Things. [Reuters]
• Hadley Freeman scored the first interview with Phoebe Philo, newly of Celine. Marco Gobetti, the LVMH vice-president with whom Philo is rumored to already be clashing, makes an uncomfortable joke about having to "cover up the bruises" — his, or Philo's, it's not clear — before the journalist arrived. [Guardian]
• The New York Times' critical shopper visited the new Brooks Brothers Black Fleece store in the West Village, and found the Thom Browne-designed line very interesting if not ultimately practical. (There are fit issues with the womenswear.) Still, the theory is good: "Picture a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Nurse Ratched, only more obsessive-compulsive. It is a look so stiffly starched - all the buttons are just so very, very buttoned, both up and down - as to recall corsetry, humane restraint devices or orthopedic inserts. It is a look that may mold and instruct the wearer in his relentless quest for superior health, posture and hygiene. As the 'Goldberg Variations' were to Glenn Gould, these clothes seem to be both the tools and execution of a meticulously tended neurosis." [NY Times]
• This sounds awesome: Prada has asked four stylists, including Carine Roitfeld and Katie Grand, to style their stores in New York, London, Paris and Milan. Anyone not in those cities can see the project online. [WWD]
• Whoa. Raquel Welch is shilling reading glasses. I suppose One Million Years B.C. was a long time ago. [Brand Freak]
• There's an entertaining and thoughtful Q&A with someone named Chicken John Rinaldi, who apparently led the fight against the proposed American Apparel on Valencia St. in San Francisco. Rinaldi comes off rather well: "It depends on whose liberty you are defending. Are you defending the liberty of American Apparel to open a store wherever they want? Or are you defending the liberty of the people who live on the block? Or are you defending the people who shop at the store? Or are you going to defend the liberty of the people who own the other stores whose rents are without question going to quadruple?" [Mother Jones]
• And now, our daily minute of hate: Italian brand Relish's new campaign, shot in Rio de Janeiro but featured now on billboards in Italy, features men dressed as Rio cops molesting women as they arrest them. [Shakesville]

• Sometimes the morning brings good news: Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are going to play Italian priests in the movie version of Nine, which was inspired by Fellini's 8 1/2. Priests! [Elle UK]

• And here's the bad news: The U.S. Department of Labor reports job losses of nearly 10,000 in the apparel and textile sector for January alone. Departent stores cut nearly 9,000 positions the same month. [WWD]
• Luxury conglomerate It Holding SpA, which owns the labels Gianfranco Ferre and Malo, may go into bankruptcy. The Italian stock exchange has suspended trade of its stock indefinitely. [WSJ]
• Residents of San Francisco's Mission district — kind of like the Williamsburg of the west — successfully fought a proposed American Apparel using the city's stringent permit requirement laws for chain stores. The idea of hundreds of American Apparel-clad hipsters arguing the finer points of locally-owned commerce to the planning commission is a little wacky but sweet. [SF Gate]
• Meanwhile, spunky Badgers influenced the University of Wisconsin to let its contract with Russell Apparel, owner of the Russell Athletic brand, lapse following reports of anti-union activity by the company in Honduras. [U.S. News]
• Phoebe Philo talks at some length about her design process for her first Céline pre-spring and resort collections, which are to be shown in June. There's nary a mention of the fact that her first Céline collection was to be for fall 09, which booster Anna Wintour had booked into an exclusive Vogue editorial for the March issue, and which sources recently reported LVMH had gotten "a team" to work on in Philo's stead. [WWD]
• This completely escaped my notice: the real people in the background of the ad campaign for Isaac Mizrahi's first collection for Liz Clairborne include bloggers Dannielle Kyrillos of Daily Candy and Katrina Longworth of Spout Blog. Wonder whose idea that was? [Brand Freak]
• Model Heather Marks diaried her food intake for seven days in the run-up to New York fashion week. You can now commence arguing about whether or not it's healthy; I vote her a paragon of nutritional virtue, but then, I've been in this industry a long time. [Grub St.]
• Fendi's sole perfume, Palazzo, which launched in 2007, is being taken off the market due to disappointing sales. [WWD]
• Victoria's Secret has hired an L.A. entertainment company to help place their products in film and television venues. Look forward to a net increase of characters taking moments to adjust their VS bra straps in 3, 2, 1... [Brand Week]
• The Times of London has a sneak peek at a new exhibition of Madonna's clothes in the English capital, and a fascinating take on the semiotics of her Madgesty's dress. [Times of London]
• Oooh. I totally want stationery that features designers' doodles and sketches. [WWD]
• Fashion houses seem of two minds about how to design for the recession: some, like Louis Vuitton and Zac Posen, are talking all about "classic" this and neutral colors that, while others, like Coach, want more than ever to harness the bright sparkle of trendiness that might make their products stand out from others'. Everyone's going to be watching to see what Marc Jacobs does, of course. [WSJ]
• And whatever that might be, the Guardian has a good, long appreciation of Jacobs' recent Stephen Sprouse collection for Louis Vuitton, and a more than a few 80s New York stories of the designer himself. [Guardian]
• Unsurprisingly, Kate Moss is the female celebrity women most want to dress like. I think, cough, she is part of the reason Hunter rubber boots are selling so well, Wall Street Journal. [The Sun]
• Ew, Fergie has a shoe line now. [WWD]
• McDonald's McCafe will be the "official coffee" of New York fashion week, with espresso and drip coffee available for free in the tents all week long. Naturally they're expecting front-row celebs to be photographed, paper cups in hand. Micky D's hasn't traditionally had the best outreach with the womenfolk; I guess by now they figured out the shortest distance to a girl's heart is via vanilla latte. [AdAge]
• The pre-holiday 70% and 80% markdowns at Saks and other department stores were just a harbinger of things to come. Expect the big stores that can afford the hit to keep pushing prices down — and expect the smaller concerns to continue struggling to compete. [WSJ]
• This is just ridiculous. Heel height has nothing to do with the economic climate, and "sky-high heels," which I'm pretty sure didn't even exist in the 1930s since they didn't then know how to achieve height and strength by using a metal core within the heel shaft, have been in for about the last four years and certainly aren't any new recession thing. Who writes this crap, and why aren't they busy getting to the bottom of the Lipstick Sales Conundrum or retooling the Hemline Bellwether hypothesis? [The Sun]
• American Eagle Outfitters is suing Citigroup for allegedly misleading them into buying assets that they were assured were safe and liquid, but whose value has now plummeted. [Dealbook]
• Unlike Kellogg's, Speedo is standing by Michael Phelps in the wake of being photographed doing whatever he was doing with that unusual-looking pipe. [WWD]
• Jason Wu's PR firm threw the 26-year-old designer a party at the Soho Grand ahead of fashion week. [Style.com]
• Love magazine, the hotly-awaited brainchild of power stylist Katie Grand (formerly of Pop) has leaked its inaugural cover. It's a triple header, with one featuring Agyness dressed up as Queen Elizabeth II, another showing Iris Strubegger as a purple-haired cyber clubkid, and the third with Iggy Pop. Looks like a winner. [Models.com]

• Jude Law-ex Sadie Frost's company, Frost-French, has been accused of firing a sales associate based on her race. The highly-experienced Aba Yankah was hired over the phone, but when she showed up for work, she claims the store's manager was cold, subjected her to demeaning tasks and then summarily fired her without justification. While a tribunal has found that Yankah did not prove outright racism, they have judged that the company's explanation to be inadequate and compensated the plaintiff for damages and lost income to the tune of £5,000 ($9,800). [Daily Mail]
• Vogue Italia pictures are up!! [NB: NSFW][Fashionista]
• "An aging British model" was busted for shaving eight years off her age to get work. Apparently changing your birth certificate qualifies as tampering with official documents. [UPI]
• Kanye West steals thunder by sporting his own line in the front row of fashion week. Apparently the Milan fixture "was kicking it in the front row at Louis Vuitton, kitted out in a teal T-shirt, khakis and a denim jacket accessorized with a Michael Jackson button and a chunky red Lego heart. What appeared to be a silk LV scarf billowed from his back pocket." [Los Angeles Times]
• By the by...Project Runway is casting. [SeenOn]

• Armani gets the French Legion of Honor. [VogueUK]
• Recessionistas take note! Flailing economy's silver lining? "Aggressive sales." [New York Times]
• The guns of august: lingerie trade show battles. [WWD]
• Recessionistas, mourn: Steve & Barry's collapse will likely imperil SJP's "Bitten" line. [AdAge]
• Viktor and Rolf to do "haute" eyelash line for Shu Uemura. "The three lash designs are Wing, which we think looks like paperclips! (pictured), Rhombus, which are gold, inspired by the diamond pattern on jesters outfits and Swirl, a set of super long lashes, which are the most simple of the three."[ElleUK]
• New "good health certificates" are totally freaking out models, says one agency rep. She claims that the initiative, designed to prevent dangerous thinness in the industry, are just an added stress during London fashion week. "I think they (the certificates) are crazy — not a good idea," Doukas said. "It will make some of the girls even more paranoid and freaked out about the weight thing, and they won't come to the U.K. market, they simply won't come to London Fashion Week." [UPI]
• Pop Magazine editor Katie Grand is, apparently, "an icon of cool." Best part of the interview? "When I met Grand she'd just been to New York for a POP shoot with the art photographer Ryan McGinley and model Agyness Deyn. She'd never worked with McGinley but he said he'd like to photograph Agyness, whom of course Grand knew, and Grand suggested they should do some nudes, because Agyness had never done a nude shoot, and McGinley agreed. 'And then a week later he sent me this reference photograph of kids falling off a fire escape - it was from the 1950s I think - and said he'd really like to have her falling. And naked. So we ended up with two stunt men and Agyness jumping naked from five stories onto a huge huge crash mat. It was incredible." [Guardian]
• Stealing hats from beggars? All in a day's work for a fashion photographer. [Telegraph]
• Mario Testino's diaries are somewhat less exciting. [Independent]
• "In one shot, the woman - dressed in clinging black dress and spike-heeled Manolos - lies seductively across the man's lap. Elsewhere, she is captured in executive-style sharp tailoring in an office overlooking St Paul's, while he is pictured straddling an MV Agusta F4 - the "Ferrari of motorcycles" - in a chic trench." The new Aquascutum campaign. [Telegraph]
• Record metal prices challenge jewelers. [WWD]
• I've always hated purple; feels either new-agey creative or Lisa Frank. Must be because I fear "the ultimate fashion challenge." [Independent]
• That $60 V-neck you got at Uniqlo? Probably at the expense of some Mongolian farmer being undercut by cheap Chinese cashmere. [Reuters]
• Theory's new accessory line inspired by Hair My brother would so do the "loser" cough right now. [Los Angeles Times]
• For fall, everyone and their mother "passionate about legwear." [WWD]
• I guess we were about due for another go-round: cherries are a trend again! [VogueUK]

Don't get us wrong, our anonymous model Tatiana has had a busy couple weeks. (Europe! Magazine photo shoots! The private satisfaction of being anonymously "famous" on the internet!) But in a business where nothing is real (except hunger pangs) she sometimes finds herself pondering the age-old question, how IS it that some of these girls get so fucking famous? Exhibit A: Karlie Kloss (left). The young Texan is suddenly the Most Famous Person In Modeling. And in fashion, if you're not talking about how great she is, you're drunkenly wondering aloud to your friends what the fuck is so great about her. This and other pressing Modelslips questions, answered by Jezebel's most symmetrically-featured contributor, after the jump.

The crush of castings and shows taking place in my temporary European home has obliterated my sense of narrative/grip on objective reality. To be recovered post-fashion week, when I can think again? I've had a full head of makeup applied and wiped off four times in the last 24 hours, entire bottles of Elnett have been applied to and then brushed out of my locks, and even my favorite heels have given my gnarled hooves blisters that tingle as I type. But — even though I come to you without a coherent anecdote to relay, I still had your handy questions to occupy my mind. What do professional models think of Miss Tyra and her cyclic night-time T.V. series? How do you get the most from a client who's paying in clothes? Sweatshops: do they weigh on anyone's conscience in fashion-land? And what's up with those agencies and their wacky commissions? That's what I'm here for!

From "squeakel":
Anyway, Tatiana, since you brought up the subject of established models, maybe you can answer something I've wondered for ages. What's so different about the girls who become successful? Why do these particular girls get so much buzz? I've seen so many workaday models who seem just as beautiful and compelling as the more famous ones.

If I knew that, I'd found an agency and get rich! I do know that it involves buzz, and often a crucial meeting with one casting director. Douglas Perrett, for example. Or Russell Marsh. Katie Grand, a stylist, has done a lot for Rachel Clark's career.

Sometimes, people just sort of fill a niche that seems to be lacking. Exhibit Karlie Kloss, the undisputed model of the moment. She is 15. She used to model for Macy's inserts. That is supposed to be a no-no. Ha!

She's American.

She's the anti-Agyness.

And yet, she is Agyness.

I met a photographer for Dazed and Confused during New York Fashion Week who told me that I was "too pretty" to work shows. (There are definitely girls who only surface during show season, nab every booking, and then disappear while the rest of us slog off to catalog jobs and magazine edits. Given how poorly paid shows are I have no idea how they eat; but it's true that they tend to be the weirder-looking models.) Whatever; I took it as a compliment.

From "ericablue":
I am completely fascinated by "paid in trade". Do you get to choose what you want? Do you keep what you are wearing? What if it is hideous?

Payment in trade can happen many ways, always at the designer's discretion. You might get a simple gift card, or an invitation to the showroom (which means you might have access to samples and next season's line). Other times someone will hand you a Mystery Bag as you leave, and you inside will find a t-shirt and a jar of face cream. Once I received a set of temporary acrylic nails, and self-adhesive nail diamantes.

Incidentally: I know one of the girls who dyed their hair blue for Marc Jacobs two seasons ago. She got a handbag. Jacobs has yet to book her for any subsequent show.

From "PhillyLass":
So, for those shows that pay cash money, what happens to the clothes? They can't sell them, can they? So, who gets to snag them?

It's one of the persistent mysteries of fashion. Some houses keep runway samples because they are the only extant iterations of their nascent lines, and they will become production prototypes. Some keep them to send to magazines for editorials. Some keep them just because — in which case you might be able to bat your eyelids and flatter and beg for a gorgeous pair of shoes or a dress you know you'd totally rock. I tend to have good luck with shoes. When they're a designer's own, and not some random borrowed/sponsored pair, you can often get some person with a headset to say "Just take them..."

I think, very occasionally, samples survive being weeded-out by grabby models, editors, and design team underlings long enough to get rounded up and sold in actual sample sales.

From "hammerimissu":
What a waste. Why are you in this industry if you admit its vacant and abuses human life via sweat shops and people who pay up the twat for "knockoff of something old" clothes.

I understand that this was more of a rhetorical gesture than a question, but it's still a sentiment I think about. Often.

The thing is, I don't believe fashion is "vacant", or at least that it's not always and necessarily so. I've met makeup artists with law degrees, refugee-from-academia stylists, and editors with genuine booksmarts. Miuccia Prada is a political science Ph.D.; I defy anyone to call her an intellectual slouch. There is creative talent housed in the rarefied echelons of high fashion — whether it's embodied by the sample sewer who apprenticed for seven years to get her padstitching up to couture standards, the designer who dreams about Proust and ancient Greece and the use of lustre in Islamic pottery, or the critical mind who parses these labors for the public. I refuse to be told that caring about fashion is for stupid women. In fact, I think that the main reason fashion is not always considered intellectually respectable is because it's largely run by, and concerns, women. Modeling is one of the few areas where women out-earn men: if I'm stupid for participating in it, I'd be far dumber to turn it down.

Not every label is run by competent, interesting, sharp-minded people. And there are plenty of commercially successful lines where the folks in charge are utterly craven. But I do meet people in this industry who have more stamps on their passports than a squad of diplomatic attachés, and who can talk about art or ancient Egypt or Italian cooking (in several fluent languages!) as well as they can hemlines.

I don't have an answer to the sweat shops. The raises-all-boats theory is crap; the economics of an industry that plucks some girls from third-world countries out of poverty and into something like fame, at the same time as it indirectly employs hundreds of thousands of other third-world girls at starvation wages, are difficult for me to weigh in on. The apparel industry has long been marked by inequality, and even a kind of systematized woman-on-woman economic violence: Victorian mill girls and garment workers also worked in underpaid and dangerous conditions to make finery for fabulously wealthy women. For all I know, so did the women who made the Roman senators' wives their purple-edged stolas.

When you buy an overpriced designer dress, at least you know that in addition to paying for the brand's imputed "value", and its marketing, and all the rest of that crap, you're also paying for centuries-old Italian silk mills to stay in business, and for retirement benefits for sewers who live middle-class lives in France. When you buy a knockoff or a chain-store cheapie, you're probably just propping up Chinese sweatshops (unless it was made in Cambodia, in which case: buy mall offerings early and often!). Not that I can manage to avoid chain stores on my earnings.

From "pisces":
How do girls break into the industry?

You meet an agency scout who takes an interest. Other tried-and-true methods include sending Polaroids to an agency, or attending an open call. Whatever you do, do not go on America's Next Top Model. Avoid modeling scams like Barbizon, John Robert Powers, and John Casablancas. And don't pay for professional "portfolio" pictures when you don't have an agency.

From "NotEvenSlightly":
Have you watched America's Next Top Model, and if so, does any of the advice and training they give have anything to do with being a working model? I prefer to think that Tyra is just crazed with power, obvs, but would like to hear your take on it.

Well, the funny thing about all the "woe is ANTM it's nothing like real modeling" bullshit is that the whole premise of the show just apes the industry practice of sending newly signed models on what're called test shoots — imitation editorials where you and the photographer get to keep the resulting images for your respective books. Of course, most test shoots involve zero-to-minimal hair and makeup, clothes from the stylist's closet (or things she's purchased to return at the shoot's end), plain studio backgrounds and/or simple outdoor settings. Not the prosthetic-nosed, race-switching, body-painted, couture-dress-wearing, Photoshopped, elaborately wigged, bizarro images ANTM challenges — God bless Ken Mok! — bring into this world. Never once have I had to walk on a rotating catwalk, or pose on a treadmill as if I were running from the fashion ghoul as embodied by Miss Jay, or make myself look like a crime victim, without "actually just look[ing] dead." But it's a fun bit of escapism.

From "dingosmom1":
Do the models have to pay all their airfare and rent, trainfare? If not, do their agents negotiate it for them? I read that agency fees in Paris are 70%, it seems you'd be paying to model if you also had to pay living expenses. It also seems the agency should earn their keep somehow!

Yes, we pay all our own expenses. And agencies have zero incentive to make your travel or living costs any cheaper than necessary: each day you stay in a given market doesn't cost them anything, but there's a chance you might work, and if you do, they'll get a cut. Agencies are also known to shamelessly overcharge on rent for the models' apartments they own (think five models sharing a 1BRM, spending $30-$40/night each), as well as for deducting mysteriously large sums for things like "photocopying" and messenger fees. That plus the fact that my last magazine editorial, which was shot for a Hearst-owned title you've probably read, paid me the stunning daily rate of 124.17 Euros (before agency commission!) means I eat a lot of pasta-and-pesto. I'm in debt to my agencies in two out of three European markets right now; I'm in the black in L.A. and New York City. It's an uneasy feeling.

Models need a friggin' union. Or Carmen Kass!

From "imnotsureibelievethis":
i guess my main question is: why are you anonymous? I'm a bit of a skeptic; mainly because of my own experiences in this vapid business, full of "girls" who go to casting after casting without a thought passing through. [...] I guess my main question is: where were the Tatiana's when I was working? It would have been a much less lonely job.

I'm anonymous because I fear professional repercussions. How would it benefit me to crow about having attended university, however briefly, or having read a given book or seen a movie? There are some people who just don't want to hear that from a model, and unfortunately they bear on my career. So I generally tell people I started modeling out of high school — it's simpler — and if I run into one of those assholes who likes to drop oh-so-obscure literary references around the unlettered models, I'll try and parry them back just to see the look on his face (it's nearly always a he).

Agencies and clients tend to like models young and pliant. I wouldn't book jobs because of this column, so I'm going to do my best to keep my identity a secret.