• 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]

• The UK supermarket chain Asda has knocked off the Fall '09 Balmain dress that Kate Moss wore out dancing — and burst the seams of — two months ago. Asda's version costs just £16. [Telegraph]

• Frederic Bourke, the co-founder of Dooney & Bourke, has been found guilty of conspiracy and faces up to 10 years in prison. Bourke, 63, was part of a group of investors who spent hundreds of millions bribing officials in Azerbaijan during the late 1990s, in order to ensure its bid for the state oil company would be accepted when the asset was privatized. Bourke even arranged for medical treatment in New York City for two corrupt officials from the former Soviet republic. The investment group was run by Viktor Kozeny, a Czech financier who earned the nickname "the Pirate of Prague" for his aggressive, and sometimes illegal, tactics in buying up formerly state-owned assets across the former Soviet Bloc. Kozeny and Bourke were, naturally, neighbors in Aspen. The handbag company executive was acquitted on money-laundering charges but in addition to jail time, he still risks up to $500,000 in fines for the conspiracy conviction. [WWD]
• Convicted rapist designer Anand Jon has fired his attorney and is seeking to represent himself through his appeals process. This should end well. [HindustaniTimes]
• Anna Sui's Target line was set to be featured Gossip Girl, according to sources from the production, but executives at the retailer changed their minds because of the debauched nature of the show. Extras were going to be wearing Sui's Target collection in a scene to be filmed at Sui's store, and there were even going to be Target logos in the background — but no more, since all the characters do drugs and get drunk and Serena killed that dude. [NYDN]
• British Vogue has pictures of all the sumptuous costumes from Coco Avant Chanel. [British Vogue]
• Matt Tyrnauer, the documentarian who spent years making Valentino: The Last Emperor, says the designer was "Difficult." Imagine that. [NYP]
• Elie Tahari and his wife, Rory, were profiled by Town & Country magazine, and said a lot of tone-deaf things about their 9,000 sq. ft. SoHo triplex penthouse. "SoHo is like our Hamptons away from the Hamptons," says Rory. Have a nice recession, reader! Hope you still have a job. [The Awl]
• Not only does everything give you cancer, according to a television doctor, everyone will get cancer. "Cancer has affected my family and me," says a cheerful Patrick Dempsey. "It's going to affect everybody. Its [sic] just a matter of time." Dempsey's new Nike campaign meanwhile features "an innovative technology piece with the Chalkbot, a mobile unit that will receive messages from consumers (via e-mail and text) and transcribe them in yellow chalk along the roads of the Tour de France." We can imagine so many ways that could go wrong, all of them entertaining. [LATimes]
• Richard Tyler's iconic red dress uniform for Delta only goes up to a size 18. [BlackBook]
• The reason Ali Wise, Dolce & Gabbana's New York publicist, hacked into designer Nina Freudenberger's voicemail? A boy. Freudenberger says she dated Downtown Records founder Josh Deutsch two years after Wise did — and five other Deutsch ladyfriends claim the publicist subjected them to harassment and hacking, too. One was so freaked she contacted a private investigator. Wise spent the night in jail after being arrested on felony hacking charges. [Daily Intel]
• Mary Kay is suing Yahoo! for providing keyword-generated ads with links to its products via Yahoo! Mail. Mary Kay only sells directly to consumers, and feels its brand image and trademarks are negatively impacted by unauthorized online sales. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Maybelline might become the official cosmetics sponsor of New York Fashion Week. [WWD]
• Project Runway's Leanne Marshall talked to Blogging Project Runway about her line for Bluefly (now on sale) and her future plans as a designer. Marshall didn't mention the blog post she wrote last month about her frustrations working with Bluefly, but she did talk about this one time she tried to make shoes with a pair of old flip-flops and a hot glue gun. [BPR]
• Jason Wu's doll business is going gangbusters. The slight designer used to moonlight as a drafter for doll companies, and now that he's made it big, he gets to produce limited-edition dolls in tiny versions of his signature line. In addition to producing dolls for Colette in Paris (215 Euros) and Jeffrey NY (price unavailable), he's also doing a version for Japan that'll cost a cool grand. [Stylefile]
• For 215 Euros, if you were perchance Christian Lacroix, you could have paid the top models Vlada Roslyakova, Hanne Gaby Odiele, Daria Strokous, and Siri Tollerød to walk in your couture show, and still had enough left over to buy lunch. [Imaginary Socialite]
• Jon Gosselin hasn't been wearing all those Ed Hardy shirts out of the goodness of his heart, or the keenness of his fashion sense. [TMZ]
  li>For some reason, the Telegraph decided to run an Anya Hindmarch press release in its style section. The accessories MBE's latest "invention"? The "hands-free handbag," a small handbag with a long, resizable, removable strap. It can be worn across the body "so it becomes part of you, instead of being a nuisance," or, get this, it can be carried inside a larger bag like a pocketbook! Innovative. [Telegraph]
• Giorgio Armani's home division is doing the interiors for a 62-apartment historic redevelopment project in Rome. [Reuters]
• Sounds like Escada's refinancing plan isn't going so well: The German luxury goods company only has enough liquidity to last through August, and it may cease trading. [AFP]
• The September issues of the ladymags are all closing this week, and indications are that they'll be about one third lighter than last year. Cash-strapped retailers and luxury brands have sharply cut their ad spending so far this year, and the September issues, normally the fashion magazine industry's fattest cash cows, will be no exception. [WWD]
• Mickey Drexler, the man who made The Gap what it was in the 90s and J. Crew what it is today, sometimes pedals around the office on his bike. [CBS]
• Or perhaps the credit for the classic brand's rejuvenation should be shared with creative director Jenna Lyons. [LATimes]
• Punky Brewster has a kids clothing line. [People]

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]

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

Writes Jennifer 8. Lee for the New York Times' City Room blog,

In one of his studies, half of the 250 subjects were told that the designer glasses they were wearing were "real," while the other half were told they were wearing "counterfeits." They were told to do a number of tasks that seemed to be related to the glasses, like evaluating scenery. But tucked into the sequence was a math test. Researchers found that 60 percent of those who were wearing "counterfeit" glasses cheated, while only 20 percent of those wearing "real" glasses cheated.

Study participants also were given a financial incentive to lie about the location of circles in a series of visual puzzles — and those with the "fake" glasses lied both sooner and more often.

The Times draws the conclusion that buying counterfeit goods has a discernible corrosive effect on an individual's morality — that, in effect, wearing an item you know to be fake is like kryptonite for your sense of right and wrong. But can it really be that simple?

I don't question that wearing branded or luxury items makes us feel a certain way: maybe smarter, perhaps more put-together, more attractive, possibly more comfortable. Some of that is the result of thoughtful design — a fabric with a superior hand against your skin, a more flattering cut greeting your glances in the mirror, a better quality of embellishment, hand-sewn details, a secret silk lining in a daring color only you know about. But a great part of our emotional reaction to brands is the sole result of calculated marketing decisions and the tide of logo-infected imagery that's washed over us all since birth. (Which conditioned response is, weirdly enough, what Ariely's study considers "real.")

Ariely also seems to have lacked a control group. No research subjects were asked to complete the honesty-testing tasks while wearing sunglasses whose brand-status was not stated, or while wearing no sunglasses at all. Having essentially no baseline for comparison makes the results suspect; unless we know how often "average" people will cheat at mathematics or lie for low-stakes financial gain under identical conditions, there's no real way to know if people wearing branded items they believe to be counterfeit or real lie and cheat more or less often.

But most importantly, in real life people are not randomly assigned authentic or copied goods — they choose to buy them. And what motivates those choices more than wealth? The segment of the population who can actually choose to buy a real Birkin (price range lower limit: $6000, according to a Forbes article from last August that quotes a luxury goods marketeer thus: "People want to spend their money on frivolous things") is vanishingly small. The market for the $100 Chinatown version is increasingly well-stocked. How utterly insulting that a study should come along effectively to congratulate the tiny segment of the population who can afford authentic luxury items on being not only more financially successful than the rest of us, but more moral. Except I'm pretty sure Bernie Madoff's Cartier wristwatches were real.

This isn't to say that counterfeiting is a business worth supporting. It's a wretched concern for any number of reasons. In addition to the obvious wrong of stealing someone else's intellectual property, it defrauds the nation of tax revenue, and large-scale counterfeiting rings are often involved in drug smuggling and other, more serious forms of organized crime. Designer copies are also frequently made by child laborers in sweatshop conditions. But do we really need to be told — by a researcher who presented his findings at a conference sponsored by no less an interested party than Harper's Bazaar — that carrying a bag we know to be cheap tat made in lamentable conditions will make us cheat and deceive those around us?

Ariely gave the thank-you Prada bag to his mother. But, like so many of us, once he'd known that special feeling of owning something "genuine" and "real" (whether or not what that mainly means is merely really, really expensive), he couldn't stop. Ariely bought a Mont Blanc pen. (Starting price: in the hundreds.)

"When I take it out and I start writing, I have this objective feeling that my thoughts are clearer. My handwriting is clearer," he says. "The truth is — I didn't anticipate it — when I take this pen, there is a special feeling."

After a lifetime lived without "fashion products," a conference sponsored by a leading ladymag ruined the good professor for anything else. If there's a lesson in that, it's not that fakes are only bought by sneaky cheating crass folk, and the real deal is always carried by upstanding citizens.

[Image via Flickr user Janoid]

The Moral Costs Of Counterfeiting [NY Times]

Related:
World's Most Extravagant Handbags [Forbes]

Leanimal.com [Official Site]

[Project Runway images by Alex Wright.]

• Americans' chances at getting a fake Gucci bag or fake Chanel sunglasses just decreased, big time. Last night brought about one of the largest counterfeit busts in recent history, with 29 people arrested, $230 million in merchandise seized, and $1 million in cash found and collected. [WWD]
  
• We love J. Crew, but a line of apparel for dogs? Puh-leeze. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• Jessica Simpson will debut her first fragrance in July 2008. And we suspect it will smell like a tasteful mixture of collagen, hair extensions, tears, and Nick Lachey and John Mayer's crotches, respectfully. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Nike profits skyrocket 32%. Say thank you, China! [WSJ]

• Not so surprising news: Renee Zellweger is the new face for Saks Fifth Avenue's breast cancer awareness initiative, Key for the Cure. Really surprising news: Renee reports that she wears Juicy Couture "pretty much everyday." So Renee is starving and no better dressed than Paris Hilton? This situation is much more dire than we initially suspected. [WWD, sub req'd]
• The city of Chicago is announcing that it will be staging it's third-annual Fashion Week this year. We have a feeling Oprah will be all over this. [WWD, sub req'd]
• What? Topshop has other designers other than Kate Moss? And what? They are actually designers by trade??? Stop this crazy talk! [Vogue UK]
• Tired Lauren Goldstein Crowe question of the day: "Halston and Harvey Weinstein: Good idea or bad idea financially?" Yawn. Who cares about finances when you have Rachel Zoe consulting on design?! [Portfolio]
• Miuccia Prada goes out on a limb and refers to her designs as "very European." [IHT]