• Alexa Chung has been named British Vogue's best-dressed for her "quirky sense of style." Also: Audrey Tautou, Freida Pinto, and Emma Watson. [ThisIsLondon]
• She's "deposed" Kate Moss, now "relegated to 10th place, only one spot ahead of Lady Gaga." [Telegraph]

• The magazine says the list was given "in no particular order," but whatevs, they totally put Alexa first on purpose. [Vogue UK]
• Speaking of Lady Gaga, she is making a guest appearance on Bravo's new replacement for Project Runway, Launch My Line. After dropping in on the aspiring designers — and scaring the pants off them, we don't doubt, see what we did there? — they learn that their weekly challenge will be to create outfits inspired by the Lady and "make sure they are pushing the boundaries of fashion without crossing the line of good taste." Since when has Lady G cared about good taste? We thought her thing was more to épater les bourgeois. [The Cut]
• Actresses and actors attending the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Awards, consider yourselves on notice: Joan Rivers is doing Fashion Police segments this year. Yay! [Stylelist]
• Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady have decided to name their two-week-old son Benjamin. [Vogue UK]
• Says Copyranter of the disturbing new Lanvin ad featuring photographer Inez can Lamsweerde in bloody red body paint, "this could be the start of a new zombie trend for 2010." Well, that or "first-year med school." [Copyranter]
• Oh, Daily Mail: "Shamed supermodel Sophie Anderton was held overnight after making a drunken scene at a London railway station." After attempting to board the Eurostar from the wrong station, Anderton, who has been described as "embattled" more than once, apparently made a scene, actually uttered the words "don't you know who I am?" and was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. [DailyMail]
• Abbey Lee Kershaw says that she, Natasha Poly, and Sasha Pivovarova took one look at Alexander McQueen's 12"-tall alien shoes and politely declined to walk in his show. Kershaw has had several runway mishaps in her short international career: platforms caused her to fall at Rodarte in September of 2008, a stumble at the same show six months later injured her knee and left her unable to walk for the rest of the season, and she fainted on McQueen's runway due to a tightly laced corset. Good to know she has her health in mind after those close calls. [Fashionologie]
• Speaking of the health vs. vanity paradigm, a woman in England had an allergic reaction to an eyelash tinting procedure — one she apparently had undergone regularly — that left her eyes swollen shut. She feared she would lose her sight and was rushed to the hospital. After 14 days of treatment with antihistamines and antibiotics, her face and eyes are still swollen, and she has had to take time off work. The salon gave her a refund but accepts no responsibility for her injuries. [Daily Mail]
• High-end retailers claim they are trying something really novel this holiday season: being nice to shoppers. Complimentary champagne, sending thank-you notes to customers, and even designer Dennis Basso himself playing shopboy: these are all strategies that department stores and boutiques are trying after a consultant performed a year-long study that determined service at pricey stores was no better than that at Ace Hardware or Lowe's. At Bergdorf Goodman, the doormen are nicer than ever — because the old ones were fired "when we found the ones we were using weren't as friendly as we wanted them to be." Happy holidays! [NYTimes]
• For its part, Macy's is keeping 12 New York-area stores open 24 hours until 6 p.m. tomorrow. Nothing says "I love you, Uncle Gary," like a box of seasonal socks you pluck from the display at 4:30 a.m. [WWD]
• Lacoste would like you to know that it is going to spend $500,000 over the next three years to try and save an endangered crocodile. Perhaps news of this relatively modest charitable investment will spur you to think fondly of its crocodile logo, and buy an item of clothing with it on it this holiday season? [WWD]
• "Project White T-Shirt" is, yes, another ts-for-charity project, but in this case the results may be purchased for reason other than philanthropy: the 31 contributors, including "Andrea Crews, Bruno Pieters, Pelican Avenue, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Daniel Palillo and other contemporary avant-gardists" were chosen for their creativity, and the results will be exhibited around the world before being auctioned for Designers Against Aids. [DazedDigital]
• Topshop's London Fashion Week designer collaboration project is brilliant: once again, the high-street innovator will present budget capsule collections with fashion week designers like Jonathan Saunders and Ann-Sofie Back. The way of the future? [Telegraph]
• The first preview for Beyoncé's fragrance, Heat! It shows her in what looks like a Russian bath-house, singing Peggy Lee. [JustJared]
• And speaking of celebrity scents: Danica Patrick has one. It's called Danica. Insert diesel fuel joke. [WWD]
• And speaking of previews: In case you didn't get the memo, Project Runway is back in New York. Like, really, aggressively, back in New York. [BloggingProjectRunway]
• On Sunday, various royals and fashion royals came out to watch the premiere of Karl Lagerfeld's film Sergei, Misia, Coco et Les Autres…100 Ans de Ballets Russes, Chanel et ‘Le Train Bleu. "Guests were given two dance-inspired Lagerfeld picture books, entitled "Sergei, Misia, Coco et Les Autres" and "Les Nijinsky." [WWD]
• Lifetsyle brand Le Tigre put up this charmer of a billboard on Manhattan's West Side Highway yesterday: "Golf Needs a Tiger: Let's Get Back on Course." In case you're wondering, yes, Le Tigre is owned by punmeister Kenneth Cole. [WWD]
• "When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be, I'd say, 'I want to be rich, I want to be famous, I want to live in the big city, I want to have a fabulous life'," says Tom Ford. "All I've done my entire life is fulfil my destiny." Thoughts? [Independent]

• Beyoncé's first perfume, Heat, launches in February. She says, "Red is one of my favorite colors, as is gold." And the bottle is intended to look antique, because her mother had so many old perfumes when she was little. [WWD]

• Whitney Port, of The Hills/The City fame, says, of fellow fashion-designing show alums Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag, "I put myself in a different sort of realm as them." Port's biggest fear with her label is "people not understanding your point of view, not being able to get it. But I think my biggest competition is myself." [WWD]
• About 200 Chanel employees picketed the company's headquarters just outside of Paris. Workers who make less than €3000 a month have been offered a 1% pay raise; instead, they would like a raise of 2.5%. [WWD]
• Charlize Theron embroidered a baobab tree on a pair of red Toms shoes for her limited-edition collaboration with the eco-friendly, ethically managed company. Ten thousand of the shoes will be distributed free to children in her native South Africa, and the profits from the $54 slip-ons will benefit Theron's charity. [People]
• According to Jimmy Choo, Madonna thinks his shoes are better than sex. "Madonna told me that buying a pair of my shoes is more satisfying than having sex with a man. At least you know they are going to last for ever!" [OK!]
• Tory Burch is growing overseas. The designer recently opened a flagship in Manila, and her first Tokyo store, which just fêted its launch, will be joined by 30 more outposts across the country over the next few years. [WWD]
• Check out the decade in Olsen style, from distressed denim and tube tops to Chloé wedges and studded Givenchy jackets, via the notorious NYU bag lady period. [Style.com]
• Ever since Barack Obama identified his wife's pin, on Oprah, as one he had purchased for her at Garavelli on their anniversary, people have been buying Garavelli jewelry like it's going out of style. [WWD]
• Lady Gaga curated a selection of goods for sale at the site Not Just A Label. You can snap up her fringed lace half hat from the video for "Bad Romance" for a surprisingly reasonable £92, should you feel the need to dress like a deranged Spanish widow from 2078. [NJAL]
• Malls in Dubai still seem busy, despite the debt crisis there. [WWD]
• Hilary Rhoda will be in next year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Friend-to-Jezebel Liz Glover recently interviewed the model and asked her about her shoot for last year's issue. "For a model, it is a major achievement and a business tactic to widen my fan base," said the Chevy Chase native, over e-mail. "I work out every day, and to have a strong body instead of something frail like in fashion magazines, that's something to look up to." Rhoda, of course, sometimes does appear in the pages of fashion magazines — she once made the cover of American Vogue. Could her athletic look gain high-fashion acceptance? We can dare to dream. [Washington Times]
• Model Jamie Bochert recently ran 12 blocks to get her purse back from a robber. Now that's an athlete. Also she is in the new Lanvin campaign. [WWD]
• Christian Siriano says his maternity line includes party dresses because, "When you're pregnant you still do the same things that you would normally do — go to events, baby showers and weddings. Not every brand does sweet, fun party dresses like this." [People]
• Says Carmen Dell'Orefice, whose name this time Page Six spells correctly: "Sympathy I don't need. Another ad campaign would be great." Dell'Orefice lost most of her fortune in Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme. [P6]
• More details have emerged about the fashion business incubator program launching soon in New York. Twelve lucky designers will be given the opportunity to rent studio space in the heart of the garment district for under market rates — around $1500 a month. The program is underwritten by a $200,000 grant from the New York City Economic Development Corporation and operated by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. The tenant designers will be announced this month. [FWD]
• Because of dismal sales, Ben Sherman is shuttering its women's line. The company earlier this year stopped making children's wear. [WWD]
• Nike's quarterly results for the period ended November 30 were only slightly down on last year's. Profits and sales at the world's largest sporting goods company each fell by 4%. [WSJ]

• Whitney Port isn't in Kell On Earth. And on Lauren Conrad: "We still keep in touch on a friendship level. But in terms of fashion we don't really talk about it anymore because we're not in the same arena." [PopEater]

• AIDS prevention is a cause dear to Carla Bruni's heart. Her brother, Virginio, died of the disease in 2006, and she told French television yesterday that working in fashion in the 1980s, the disease was omnipresent. "The fashion world was hit head-on by the AIDS pandemic," she said. "It really did lose members of its family." Bruni is now an ambassador with the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria, and yesterday the Elysée Palace was festooned for the first time with red ribbons. [AFP]
• A fan named Diane called in to P. Diddy's Home Shopping Network show Monday night. "I'm so nervous!" she squealed. "Don't be nervous," replied the suave object of her affections. "I wish I could just jump through the screen and give you a hug, girl." [The Cut]
• Alber Elbaz designed some sweet heart-shaped Lanvin stamps, covered with his doodles, for the French postal service. [WWD]
• Maria Sharapova would like a fashion line, just as soon as she's finished kicking everyone's asses on the court. [Reuters]
• Liberty of London is taking its gorgeous William Morris aesthetic to the masses: it's partnering up with Target. [WWD]
• John Galliano not only designed a gorgeous Christmas tree that looks right out of a Hokusai print: it will be installed at the Claridge's hotel in a constellation of 20 of his haute-couture dresses. Swoon. [Telegraph]
• If Simon Doonan wanted a crowd, he should have gone the way of XOXO's flagship, which features a rotating cast of two female models paid to dress and undress in front of a glass window on 5th Avenue. The creative director who came up with the concept, in case you're wondering, is a woman. [CNN]
• Mango inked a deal with J.C. Penney. The Spanish brand has 1,200 stores worldwide, but only 12 in the U.S., so their distribution in this country has just officially mushroomed. [Crains]
• Carmen Dell'Orefice is working on a coffee table book of photography, scheduled for release on her 80th birthday. This story is funny mainly for how the Post mangles her name. Carmen De L'Orifice, indeed. [P6]
• Jil Sander's latest jewelry collection, made with Damiani, is out. "Jil Sander, even being considered as the brand of pureness, can create a product category such as jewelry," sniffed creative director Raf Simons. Prices start at around €890 for the baubles; Jil Sander watches are coming in the spring. [Independent]
• Seamstresses and designers who were employed in Christian Lacroix's workshop were yesterday told they had lost their jobs, following the court ruling that the bankrupt house could be transformed into a licensing operation. Dressmaker Nadia Schoope said, "I didn't think it would finish like that. I can't understand how a house like Lacroix cannot draw buyers." Monika Soszynska, who worked in couture accessories, said, "It's surreal, we can't believe that it's stopping, it's not possible. I can't believe we won't be doing the next haute couture collection." [ToL]
• H&M wants to open home stores. The Swedish retailer, which has been plagued by declining sales, opened 240 stores this year. [WWD]
• Dockers thinks the tag line "Behold the second dawn of man" will move some khaki pants. Global marketing vice president Jennifer Sey tells BrandWeek about the genesis of the campaign: "We started to do some research. In today's world, men have lost a bit of footing, in part because women have come so far, but we also found a few surprising facts: Eighty-percent of those who suffered unemployment in the last year were men. Women outnumber men in the workforce now. But the most surprising fact of all was that men's testosterone levels have been dropping by a percentage point a year for the last 20 years. All these factors add to up say, 'Wow, men are struggling in today's world.'" She's not trying to sell pants with pathetic anti-feminist rhetoric, she's just trying to "inspire today's men to be men," ladies. [BW]
• Roland Mouret has a capsule collection for Net-A-Porter on sale now. The seven lovely silk dresses come in seven bright colors, and cost $1,495-$3,070. [WWD]
• The fate of all Victoria's Secret diamond-encrusted bras is to be dismantled for parts. Because nobody ever buys them. [WSJ]
• Christian Louboutin, on Jennifer Lopez's single, "Louboutins" — which name-checks his brand 45 times, yes, he counted: "Jennifer told me about the song back in January, and I was extremely flattered. But of course, in America the public pronounces my name in like a million different ways. So Jennifer called me, and she was like, 'Listen, I want to make sure that I get it right.' And she did...from the very first time! I know the song by heart now. Because the brilliant part of the single is that it's not about me. It's about a girl and her shoe. When something is so in mass culture and you have almost nothing to do with it, it's kind of cool. It's weird but not disagreeable." [FWD]

• To mull during your post-Thanksgiving satiety: A reclining Heidi Klum, with feast, in jigsaw puzzle form. [FWD]

• Karl Lagerfeld's helmets — first glimpsed on the runway earlier this year — have entered the retail food chain. Anyone in need of a €1200 - €4545 helmet, possibly mink-covered or embroidered with pearls, should try her luck at — where else? — Colette in Paris starting this December. These have iPod hookups, people. [Hintmag]
• Online magazine Flamboyant — which has one of those frustrating websites where the component pages are unlinkable — did a wickedly funny editorial where it styled various bread rolls as though they were designer branded creations. In a world where Karl Lagerfeld can make $6,000 helmets and Christian Audigier can sell $3 name-brand water, let's not give them any ideas, shall we? [FWD]
• If you can fit into the Kate Moss — Scarlett Johansson size range, want to wear a Lanvin dress to your holiday party, and live in the UK, Topshop just might have your number. The high street chain has persuaded 20 celebs — Freida Pinto, Jourdan Dunn, and, uh, Peaches Geldof among them — to donate one preferred party frock apiece. (Peaches' is that horrid floral curtain number she wore at Cannes this summer, so beware.) The dresses will be available for public hire for £40, and then a silent auction for outright ownership. All proceeds go to a charity for the elderly. [Daily Mail]
• Alternatively, you could just wait 6-12 months for Coco Rocha's fashion line to become a reality. She just posted a video on her blog announcing the new venture, and which shows her hard at work sketching. She's also seeking name ideas. [OhSoCoco]
• Eugenia Kim reads Gawker. HAMILTON WILL NEVER LOVE YOU LIKE I DO, EUGENIA!! [TFI]
• Tommy Hilfiger's Greenwich, Connecticut, home sold for $20 million, about $8 million less than his asking price, but still $2 million more than he paid for it in 2005. [AP]

• Michelle Trachtenberg is designing a line of jewelry for Coach's Poppy brand. Expect "colorful crystals." [WWD]
• Zac Posen is doing a lower-priced line, Z Spoke, which will be available exclusively through Saks Fifth Avenue come spring. It starts at $78:

• And it's a marked departure from his evening wear-heavy main line. "It's not Zac-for-less, it's not the little sister collection at all," says the designer. "The dresses — that's something I can do with my eyes closed. This is about a new identity." Hopefully that new identity includes solvency, given Posen, subject to continued rumors about his company's financial status, was forced to lay off staff recently. [WWD]
• Why is Cintra Wilson reviewing the Fifth Avenue Armani store now? That opened months ago. And it was extensively covered and reviewed in the Times back then. [NYTimes]
• Sophie Theallet's friend and longtime supporter Rupert Everett is happy she won the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund Award. Theallet is going to collaborate again with Manolo Blahnik on her runway show footwear for next February, and this time, some styles will be available in stores. [WWD]
• Some "legendary" male models we've never heard of (OK, male models we have heard of comprise exactly Tyson Beckford and that guy who was in Calvin Klein ads before he played Samantha's boyfriend on Sex And The City) are in this month's VMAN. [Independent]
• Claudia Schiffer has been thinking more about that clothing line she mooted a week or so back. "I have no definite first product in mind, but I would love to do cashmere. It's something I wear all the time myself, but I'd love to do something a bit more price-friendly. Plus a lot of cashmere lines are very classic and timeless, while I'd want to do it a bit more fashion. Or I could imagine doing handbags." You know. Cashmere. Or handbags. [WWD]
• If you need a fresh reason to hate the fashion industry this morning, how about an over-privileged under-informed 17-year-old heaping scorn on Luella's closure, and bragging about how she has, like, a ton of Lacroix — in the garage? Jane Aldridge probably kisses her Vogue portrait before going to bed each night. Right after inclining her head to say her prayers to Anna. [Fashionista]
• Vivienne Westwood says of the same closure, "It's very sad, but English fashion will survive, and be stronger." [Style.com]
• A four-day auction of the last contents of Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent's home has begun in Paris. Everything from the chandeliers to the pots and pans is for sale, some 1,185 objects in all. [Breitbart]
• Lanvin has attracted a minority investor. An unnamed entity, believed to be a European family, has bought a 12.5% stake in the business, for an estimated tens of millions of Euros. Last year, sales at Lanvin rose 29%. [WWD]
• Apparently it takes £230 worth of creams to look like Jane Birkin, along with Clarins and Dr. Hauschka makeup. And we always thought her so low maintenance and carefree. [Daily Mail]
• Birkin's daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg may be the face of the new Balenciaga perfume, but that won't stop Olivier Zahm from photographing the bottle between the breasts of a topless mannequin. Stay classy, Olivier! [FWD]
• John Bartlett, the recently fired men's wear designer for Liz Claiborne, has announced a collaboration with Alex Carleton of Rogues Gallery. RG/JB will launch in December at John Bartlett's Greenwich Village store, and will include a handcrafted leather log carrier and bankers' envelopes. Sounds practical. [WWD]
• Porsche is bringing back Yoko Ono's favorite sunglasses. [Luxist]
• A Gap store in Vancouver turned itself upside down to sell shoppers on a new kind of reward program called, for some reason, Sprize. They hung all the mannequins from the ceiling and turned the signage upside-down, but what you really need to know is this: Sprize reimburses you the cost difference automatically if merchandise you buy full-price later goes on sale. It's like everything you ever buy will be on sale. And it's not in the U.S. yet why??? [BrandFreak]
• Rosita and Tai Missoni seem like an adorable old couple. [Scotsman]
• Expect Burberry handbags, shoes and belts, as well as children's wear, in the near future. [Reuters]
• In coordination with something called cryptically "more trees," Louis Vuitton is paying 10 million yen (about $112,000) to reforest a 104-hectare area of land in Japan, to be known as the Louis Vuitton Forest. (Insert your own where-handbags-grow-on-trees joke.) [Japan Tourism]

• Mickey Rourke, at Max Azria: "I really don't like Max that much. He's a short little guy with a good looking wife. Maybe I'll steal his wife." [WSJ]
• Tom Ford to close-talking columnist: "Are you trying to smell me?" [NationalPost]

• If you care about who People thinks is the best-dressed, their annual list is out. Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon, Vanessa Hudgens, and Freida Pinto all made the cut; on the men's side, so did Brad Pitt, Robert Pattinson, and Bradley Cooper. [People]
• Audrey Tautou, currently playing Coco Chanel across multiple platforms, has a print ad for Chanel No. 5 out. [People]
• Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz is to address the UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries in Italy next week. [WWD]
• Lauren Conrad presents her fall collection for Kohl's in this video. It's very cute how she pretends to have seen it before. [People]
• Avril Lavigne presented her collection for Kohl's in New York City on Monday night. It includes a hoodie with earbuds in the drawstring. We must have missed this one for the Snuggie show. [People]
• Ralph Lifshitz and Calvin Klein grew up in the same part of the same neighborhood of the Bronx, Norwood's Mosholu Parkway, and both attended Public School 80, four years apart. Former Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer says, "These are working-class guys — they were neither poor nor wealthy, and it's interesting that their clothes are aspirational. Ralph Lauren designs preppy, polo type clothes. That wasn't his experience then. So does Calvin Klein — elegance, simplicity." [Cityroom]
• Anya Hindmarch believes in "speaking up for bespoke" objects in a time of mass-production. Naturally, she also believes in charging £500 for a wallet. [ToL]
• Meanwhile, for the rest of us, Zara has plans to start selling its clothes online. [FT]
• Georgia May Jagger: "I really don't get it, to be perfectly honest. I still don't have that firm a grasp on why me being my parents' daughter is so interesting." Being your parents' daughter is the only reason you have a career, dear! [Style.com]
• It's certainly the only reason Vanity Fair is talking to her. "Modeling is always something I've really admired because I've seen my mum and sister do it," says Jagger. [VF]
• David Lauren: "We created the first 24-hour shopping experience on the windows of our mansion on 72nd St. You can literally walk up to the glass, press on the glass, and shop the product that's in the store. You can touch your credit card to the glass and buy it." [The Cut]
• Will lazy writers ever abandon the canard that Lara Stone — a model with stated measurements of 33"-24"-35", entirely within the tiny range of straight-size modeling — is somehow "curvy" or represents "change" on the catwalk? Stone — who is incredibly good at what she does, and well established in the business because of it — has not been "opening everyone's shows." In fact she has yet to be spotted anywhere in the lineup at a single show this season. [Telegraph]
• Halston, that long-rudderless brand, had a spring presentation that was a bit of a train wreck. The clothes looked very similar to each other, and the mannequins were weird. [WSJ]
• Barneys New York has now operated for 14 months without a C.E.O. Wracked by debt, the retailer is the subject of rumors alleging its inability to even pay its invoices. The head of Istithmar, the investment fund that owns Barneys, says "We have stood by Barneys and will continue to stand by this company." Words you never want to have to hear from a C.E.O. [WWD]
• Nina Garcia's third book about personal style is naturally all about the recessionista, not the fashionista. [Reuters]
• According to an online survey of 61,000 teens, teenagers are spending less money, because their parents are giving them less money, because their parents have less money. Thanks for getting to the bottom of this important recession conundrum, social networking site Habbo Hotel. [Reuters]

• Nicolas Ghesquière picked the intolerably cool Charlotte Gainsbourg to advertise Balenciaga's perfume. Ghesquière calls his friend "one of the most inspiring girls in the world." Gainsbourg said, "I was secretly hoping to be the face of Nicolas' first perfume." [WWD]

• Sources are saying Rihanna has an editorial, shot by Steven Klein, in Italian Vogue's September issue. [Fashionologie]
• Julia Restoin-Roitfelt, French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld's daughter, is the face of a new perfume by Jil Sander. [NowSmellThis]
• Hold onto your quirky hats, everybody! There's going to be a new hour-long television drama set in the New York fashion world. Because it's going to star a lady, it'll be just like the new Sex And The City! Isn't that exciting? [Variety]
• The ten finalists in this year's CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund are: Flora Gill and Alexa Adams of Ohne Titel; Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin; Patrik Ervell, Sophie Theallet, Waris Ahluwalia of House of Waris, Wayne Lee of Wayne, George Esquivel of Esquivel Shoes, Gary Graham, Monique Péan, and Simon Spurr of Spurr. Congratulations to them all! The winners of the six-year-old cash and mentorship award will be announced on November 16; past honorees include Proenza Schouler, Alexander Wang, and Doo-Ri Chung. [WWD]
• Doo-Ri Chung is just one of many designers whose business has been hurt by the economic downturn. Chung is owed more than $60,000 by the owners of Jake, a small, independent Chicago boutique. Specialty retailers have been among the hardest-hit in the whole retail sector, but the two men behind Jake, Jim Wetzel and Lance Lawson, actually managed to reorganize their company when it went bankrupt, and continue on as employees of a new entity, the Jake Retail Group. Except that Jake Retail Group did not assume liability for any of the store's debts — meaning that Chung, plus other young designers like Brian Réyes, Tina Lutz and Marsha Patmos of Lutz & Patmos, and Emma Fletcher of Lyell, are out tens of thousands of dollars each for clothes they made and shipped, and Jake sold, but which haven't been paid for. [NYTimes]
• Lyle Lodwick, brother of fameballer Jakob, is a male model. He says that male models take their jobs less seriously than women models do — which is generally true — but also that women models are, naturally, bitchier. "I've heard horror stories of girls putting needles in a girl's shoes so when she's on the runway she'll fall over." Lodwick: Whichever sweet model lady told you that is pulling your leg. [TDB]
• Ossie Clark, the iconic British label that was briefly revived by private investors, is closing again. [WWD]
• The occasion of Berlin designer Patrick Mohr's recent homelessness-themed collection, where he had homeless people walk his runway caked in mud, is used to peg a list of other politically edgy collections of varying levels of success — like John Galliano's own Spring 2000 homelessness-themed couture work, Rei Kawakubo's 1995 Comme des Garçons collection that looked like concentration camp victim uniforms, and Karl Lagerfeld's 1994 appropriation of verses from the Koran. Somehow, the list ends with nary a mention of Miguel Adrover's 2001 MeetEast collection, which was so widely panned it drove the talented designer out of business. [TDB]
• Alber Elbaz: ""The people I chose to run my new store in London are nice. I cannot work with bitches, I can't, I can't. Maybe I am too sensitive, I get blocked. There are some people who don't give a damn. With me, I find that if there is no energy flowing or no connection, I can't think. Talent is amazing - I love it, appreciate it. I respect talent a lot. But if you ask me, ‘Talent and bitch, or less talent and good?' I'll go with less talent." [MyFashionLife]
• New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo caught the firm behind the "Lifestyle Lift" cosmetic surgery procedure posting fake customer reviews and testimonials on the Internet — and won a $300,000 settlement for the astroturfing. [Clickz]
• U.K. lingerie maker Intimas is in bankruptcy administration. Around 200 jobs are at risk. [ToL]
• Liz Claiborne, which has been struggling in the recession, renewed its C.E.O. William McComb's contract, but didn't give him a raise — just a bigger bonus. [WSJ]
• That story about how Crocs are going bust is getting written again, this time kind of artlessly. [WaPo]
• In the second quarter, net income at Joe's Jeans fell 17.8%, on a same-store sales decline of 4.3% [WWD]
• Chemists have traditionally been unable to produce fabrics that are reliably water-repellent when doused with hot, instead of cold, water. Which is why the development of a hydrophobic fabric coating that can repel hot water is potentially exciting news. Scientists think it could have applications in protective clothing, for instance for people who are at risk of scalding burns. [NS]

• Michael Jackson's entire family — including the kids — reportedly wore Versace to his memorial service yesterday. The singer was a longtime admirer of Gianni Versace's work, and LaToya Jackson contacted Donatella Versace to arrange for the custom outfits. [InStyle]

• The above would seem to fit with the findings of this trend story on celebrities increasingly bypassing stylists to contact designers directly. [NY Observer]
• An hour after the end of his own couture show — which may prove to be his last — designer Christian Lacroix paid a visit to Givenchy. Lacroix then went backstage to greet designer Riccardo Tisci and Delphine Arnault. Givenchy is owned by Bernard Arnault's luxury conglomerate LVMH; so was the house of Lacroix, until LVMH sold it to current owners the Falic group because it wasn't making any money. Despite the fact that Bernard Arnault is nothing if not a canny businessman unlikely to send good money after bad, Lacroix's visit in the midst of his company's bankruptcy has set tongues wagging that LVMH might re-invest. [FWD]
• Precisely because it is incredibly expensive and very limited in its customer base, couture is a sensible business for many kinds of fashion house to be in — the revenues from selling couture may be small, but the brand awareness having a couture collection builds moves a lot of perfume, scarves, sunglasses, shoes, handbags, and ready-to-wear. Companies that tend to do well with couture are either mega-sized Dior logo-behemoths that work the market from all those angles, or really tiny, esteemed couture houses that don't try and wager couture's tiny revenue stream on retail stores or other big costs. According to this story, Christian Lacroix's problem was that his company was in the middle — it expanded in recent years, got the new stores, got the perfume deal, but the core of his business, and its most reliable profits came from couture alone. [WSJ]
• But this season, neither Anna Wintour nor André Leon Talley has been spotted at the couture shows. [FWD]
• Karl Lagerfeld says there's nothing whatsoever to those rumors that he is planning retirement, and will be replaced by Lanvin's Alber Elbaz. He told Cathy Horyn of the Times that he expects to die at the house of Chanel. [OnTheRunway]
• But Lagerfeld, a legendary haver of minor spats, has already found a reason to dislike Audrey Tautou. He wasn't involved in her casting, as Coco Chanel, in the movie Coco Avant Chanel, and says he didn't have anything to do with her selection in the recent Oriental Express-themed No. 5 ad, either. The point of origin of their tiff is purportedly a statement Tautou made about Chanel in the French press. When asked if she often wore Chanel, the actress replied, "Sometimes. This morning I wore the rain boots." This remark Lagerfeld found dismissive. [WWD]
• Armani might be outfitting the Italian swimming team at the World Championships this summer in Rome, but that hasn't stopped Dolce & Gabbana underwear launching an ad campaign starring the men's team's biggest stars. You're welcome. [FWD]
• Are you pale and thoughtful? Do you like boys who sparkle in the sunshine, and hanging out in the woods? Then this $64 "Twilight" hoodie — featured in the movie, fangirls! — is just the thing for you. [FF]
• Alternatively, here are instructions and patterns to make your very own Matthew Williamson caftan out of 2.5 meters of chiffon or georgette. And a sewing machine. [LondonObs]
• Because Jil Sander cannot use her own name —Raf Simons designs Jil Sander, thankyouverymuch — the capsule collection she will produce with Uniqlo will be called +J. As a creative director for the whole brand, other garments that Sander designs for Uniqlo will be simply branded Uniqlo. [WWD]
• The line-up for September's New York Fashion Week is looking strong — organizers say although there are a greater number of presentations (which are cheaper to stage) than runway shows, the total number of presentations and shows matches the total number of presentations and shows from last September. [WWD]
• Seventeen employees of the New York-based retailer Scoop are suing the company, claiming that it gave them bogus promotions to salaried positions to avoid paying them for their overtime hours. Stock handlers and security guards allege that after being hired to work for hourly wages, they received promotions to salaried assistant managerial positions, but didn't actually have any change in their duties whatsoever. Nonetheless, as "managers", they were expected to work 50-60 hour weeks for their salaries. [Crain's]
• Fashion journalist Sarah Mower hates miniskirts ("the aim is a brash, sexy glamour of the most repulsive brassiness") and wearing tights in the summertime. She also hates sales, because "They drag on for months and the shops are a mess. Plus, I do not like the experience of looking at things I've bought at full price hanging there at 70 per cent off." [Telegraph]
• Somebody named Tahnee Atkinson has won a season of Australia's Next Top Model. She's no Alice. [SMH]

• Posh and Becks are in an underwear ad, together! David seems to be deep in thought, perhaps pondering the wisdom of letting Armani give him hair that belongs on a Lego newscaster. Narrate Victoria's inner monologue in the comments! [Telegraph]

• Keira Knightley is still the face of Coco Mademoiselle. She gives great sexyface in the new ad. [Sassybella]
• Two designers you have never heard of are looking forward to seeing Brüno when it opens on July 10. [AP]
• Kanye's Louis Vuitton's sneakers — which came into stores very suddenly yesterday, with no pre-announced release date to build the excitement — have already sold out. How come? Sneakerheads, Louis Vuitton nerds, and Kanye fans have been on a waiting list for the kicks since January. If you want some of the $840-$1,140 shoes, the Louis Vuitton store will put your name on a "wish list" in case more become available. But don't hold your breath. [The Cut]
• Diane von Furstenberg is accused of polluting the Meatpacking District with her signature scent. Allegedly, the perfume emanating from her W. 14th St. headquarters' ventilation system is overpowering; one passerby called the perfume "putrid, awful . . . something you'd find on a 60-year-old matron." And a receptionist at a nearby eye clinic said patients had complained. [P6]
• Real Housewife Kelly Bensimon has a jewelry line, produced with Mouawad, the same company that does Nicole Richie's House of Harlow 1960. Of her character on her popular reality show, she says, "I think that because I'm so down-to-earth they're like, 'Okay we have to pump her up a little bit because otherwise people are not going to believe'...If they want me to be some kind of crazy socialite, I'm not a socialite. I'm a working girl, a single mom." As for the jewelry, which is priced at $32-$336 and is based on pavé geometric designs, Bensimon explains her inspiration thus: "I love Navajo and I love the idea of taking Pocahontas out of the kayak and putting her into the disco." Also, there are snakes in the form of bracelets and rings, which may or may not have something to do with Milton. [W]
• Los Angeles designers really, really wish their fashion week — limping on since the departure of sponsors IMG, Mercedes-Benz, and Smashbox Studios — could join the Big Four. But all the best L.A. designers — Band of Outsiders, Rodarte, Trina Turk, Monique Lhuillier — seem to show in New York. [WSJ]
• Ending the tide of good news for London Fashion week is the withdrawal of Aquascutum. The iconic English label has been put up for sale by its parent company, Japan-based Renown, after a buy-out bid by Aquascutum management was rejected. [WWD]
• Donatella Versace attended an event at the Whitney where children with chronic or life-threatening illnesses drew pictures for her. The sketches chosen by Versace will be featured on limited-edition Versace tote bags, to be sold for $200-$250 via Gilt Groupe this fall. No word on how much the kids will make from their intellectual property. [Style.com]
• This is just too weird. Ed Hardy CEO Hubert Guez owns Michael Jackson's Holmby Hills house and grounds. Jackson was renting the 7-bedroom, 13-bathroom French chateau-style manse for $100,000 a month. Now, maker of tacky Ed Hardy t-shirts Christian Audigier is moving in. [TMZ]
• Now that it has a designer in London-based (but New York-relocating) Marios Schwab, Halston can do things like sign multi-million-dollar distribution deals for its wares. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Kate Gosselin's clothing project with Healthtex is on hold. [Radaronline]
• Uniqlo's same-store sales rose 6.4% in June. [WWD]
• Polo Ralph Lauren has extended its deal to dress the U.S. Olympic team through the winter games next year and the summer games of 2012. [WSJ]
• To mark its 120th anniversary, the house of Lanvin is releasing a line of limited-edition commemorative items, including hand-painted porcelain figurines of its mother-daughter logo. There'll also be notebooks, music boxes, paper weights, and embroidered t-shirts. No word on prices yet. [WWD]
• LVMH bought a large stake in the organic, sustainably-produced clothing company Edun, so PPR is sponsoring — to the tune of 10 million Euros — a film about the environment. [WSJ]
• A pink wireless mouse with gold accents, made by Juicy Couture, costs $55 at Neiman Marcus. Is it terrible that we would have expected it to be more of a rip-off? [FWD]
• Just released is a new issue of WWWWD, the fashion periodical that feels so real it's got to be fake. This edition is all about men, so expect jokes on bromance, Kris Van Assche, Ed Westwick, and a nice rip on Olivier Zahm for good measure. [WWWWD]

• Madonna's fall campaign for Louis Vuitton leaked online, and the star — captured by Steven Meisel and 23 psychedelic Photoshop layers — sort of looks like a marble statue. [Fashionologie]

• Roberto Cavalli's and Gianfranco Ferré's Fall 2009 campaigns are also out. In the sense of "On the Internet," not in the sense of "In the magazines." [FWD]
• 50 Cent's new fragrance deal, for the scent "Power", is unusual in that the star is not simply licensing his name to a company. He actually is a part-owner of Lighthouse Beauty, the business that will release Power. The other partners are a veritable who's-who of the fragrance industry. [WWD]
• Clements Ribeiro is the latest British fashion house to announce its intention to return to London Fashion Week for its 25th anniversary. The husband-and-wife design duo join Burberry, Pringle of Scotland, Jonathan Saunders, and Matthew Williamson, in showing their respective Spring 2010 collections in London. Clements Ribeiro last showed in London in September 2005. [Telegraph]
• Expectant Victoria's Secret superstar Adriana Lima's wedding to Marko Jaric was witnessed only by the couple's lawyers. "It was really romantic," said the model. Lima said she doesn't know the sex of her baby, due in December, and hopes to have a large family. [People]
• eLuxury.com is closing its doors as a retailer today. (Last-minute sale items are an additional 50% off, so if you want Alexander Wang jeans for $375 $75, or a D&G corset dress for $495 $148.50, now's your moment.) Apparently, eLuxury is planning to relaunch itself as a social networking site dedicated to...luxury. Because in this economy, talking about fancy shit online is still free. [WWD]
• Supermodel Angela Lindvall has designed a t-shirt for Edun, Ali Hewson's organic, sustainably-produced fashion line (which is newly owned by luxury mega-company LVMH). The shirt is blue with a white design that Lindvall says "was created from the shadows of trees. Our shadow side is what sometimes pushes us to grow." [Fashionista]
• Style.com traced the influence of Kate Moss's gold lamé Marc Jacobs dress and Stephen Jones turban from the Met Ball through the Resort collections. As if we were ever in any doubt that Ms. Moss's style cuts a long swath. [Style.com]
• Patrick Dempsey's new scent for Avon (?!) is to be appropriately named: Patrick Dempsey 2. [WWD]
• The first rule of working for fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone is: Do not blog about Kelly Cutrone. When the fashion publicist caught one of her summer interns — an NYU student, natch — writing about her online, she took the girl aside and said: "I'm going to sue the fuck out of your family if you don't take it down immediately and your college tuition is going to seem like a pittance after you face my wrath." [The Cut]
• Reebok is launching a maternity division for its NFL line. [WWD]
• Michelle Obama wore Lanvin yesterday, should you care. [The Cut]
• Brooke Burke, her fiancé, and her four kids, ages 1, 2, 7, and 9, are going to do a Skechers ad as one big happy family. No word on how much the clan nets. [WWD]
• Zac Posen did his part for Gen Art at the fashion incubator's fund-raiser Wednesday night. Also? Zac Posen is totally that guy at the art opening who'll say, "I like the Sol LeWitt technique put into something figurative..." [Style.com]
• Escada, the struggling fashion house who earlier this year announced its debt had risen to €187.6 million, and its cash on hand had dwindled to just €24.7 million, is about to launch the €200 million bond-exchange program the company hopes will raise it enough cash to emerge from this recession intact. Bondholders, starting Monday, will be encouraged to exchange their old bonds for new ones, at an early-bird rate of €400 in new bonds per €1,000 in old bonds previously held. (After July 14, the bond exchange will net bondholders €375 per €1,000 in debt.) The exchange will only go forward if 80% of bondholders agree to it, but the company says all the preconditions are set. Its two major shareholders, the billionaire brothers Wolfgang and Michael Herz, who together own 24.9% of Escada, are on board. [WWD]
• Hartmarx has won court approval to be sold to the private equity firm Emerisque Brands. Emerisque bid $128.4 million for the bankrupt men's clothier, and pledged to retain many of the company's 4,000, mostly Chicago-based, workers. Biggest creditor Wells Fargo bank had argued that Hartmarx should be liquidated to cover its $261 million debt. [NYTimes]
• Customs and Border Patrol seized 10,900 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes off the docks in Los Angeles. The imitation shoes had a face value of $1.8 million. [WWD]

• Stephanie Seymour's divorce from Peter Brant just got ugly: security guards hired by Brant to protect the family home allegedly assaulted the model and pushed her through a screen door. Police have been called to the house twice. [E!]

• Fashion plate Kanye West, on his "wardrobe staple" Air Yeezy sneakers: "When I was designing these, I was inspired by the combination of materials used on the Fendi 'Spy' bags, as well as the colorways used on the robots in Robotech — muted tones accented with a pop of color. And of course we referenced the Nike mag from Back To The Future II. We're trying to bring kids into the future with this shoe." Doing the Lord's own work, this guy. [Style.com]
• Emma Watson was reportedly fine with appearing in a risqué W magazine shoot, but Harry Potter producers thought it wasn't appropriate for her character's image, so they forced the magazine to tone down the concept. [Daily Mail]
• Chloë Sevigny is hinting that she's in a collaborative mood. "I'd like to do something with a high-end company. You know, the way that Sofia Coppola did with Louis Vuitton. I thought it was very cool. There were no labels on anything. I like that. I prefer it." Her dream partner? Hermès. In which case, the actress might have to keep dreaming. [Style.com]
• Three-year-old Suri Cruise: Is cute, wears clothes. [Mirror]
• As had been expected, Versace C.E.O. Giancarlo di Risio tendered his resignation on Friday. [WSJ]
• Fellow former model Ines de la Fressange says Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is making her husband watch Italian films. "It's great for French culture that Sarkozy's watching Visconti and Fellini!" [Times of London]
• Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards event organizers KCD productions have made nine short films, one for each nominee. Instead of pairing the designers Thakoon Panichgul, Jason Wu, Alexander Wang, Justin Giunta, Alejandro Ingelmo, Albertus Swanepoel, Patrick Ervell, Tim Hamilton and Robert Geller with models wearing their clothes, director Michael Palmieri and still photographer Jennifer Livingston matched the designers with editors from magazines like V and Harper's Bazaar. To see the films, unfortunately, you have to be at the CFDAs on June 15. [FWD]
• Zac Posen, foodie: "I love grocery shopping. I'm a produce fanatic...I cook three nights a week. After the Met Ball I went home and made whole wheat pasta and puff pastry!" [Fashionista]
• The designer is said to be cooking with chefs Giada de Laurentiis and Marcus Samuelsson at the Wine & Food Festival in New York this October. [P6]
• Posen also confirmed that he is working on a scripted television series, but that the project is in its early stages. And he said his Spring line will be partly inspired by Facebook. [The Cut]
• While the New York Post and other outlets eagerly reported the tidbit that Anna Wintour appeared at Jason Wu's resort show without her sunglasses, they (or their source) forgot to mention that Wintour hurriedly left the building four minutes before the show was scheduled to start. "She had a plane to catch," says a Vogue staffer. "But she saw Jason's entire collection earlier and really liked what she was looking at." Okay then. [FWD]
• Nicole Richie's House of Harlow 1960 line of jewelry is now available for online purchasing in the U.K. [Telegraph]
• Tommy Hilfiger's sales rose 21% in the first quarter of this year. [WWD]
• The houses of Lanvin and Chanel each contradicted reports that Alber Elbaz and Karl Lagerfeld would be leaving their positions, and Elbaz would be taking the reins at Chanel. All the best rumors get denied. [The Cut]
• Fashion writer Shane Watson connects the rise of preppy style — Michelle Obama-style cardigans, schoolboy blazers, loafers, crisp white shirts and ankle-grazing jeans — with the changing taste patterns of the recession. "It's the antibling look," she notes. [Times of London]
• A division of Men's Wearhouse was the highest bidder in an auction to buy the bankrupt Filene's Basement chain of discount department stores. [WWD]
• Analyst Frank Curzio rates Kenneth Cole as a stock to buy, because the retailer is cutting costs aggressively in order to improve its numbers. (Last quarter, the company lost $8.2 million, and same-store sales fell by 16%.) But now that good ol' Kenneth has eliminated 401(k) matching contributions... [TS]
• Tory Burch has given money to a foundation bearing her name which will extend credit to aspiring entrepreneurs who wouldn't qualify for bank loans. Accion, a microlender, will administer the loans. [WWD]
• Talbots acquired J. Jill for $517 million in 2006, but it just had to offload the brand for a mere $75 million. The buyer was a subsidiary of San Francisco-based private equity fund Golden Gate Capital. Talbots lost $560.7 million last year. [WWD]
• "New fashion copyright bill will let big companies own public domain designs and bury young, indie designers in legal costs." Well. That's an interesting take on legislation that would allow designers, big and small alike, legal recourse when their intellectual property is stolen. [BoingBoing]

• Posters The Last International Playboy, featuring Lydia Hearst in a state of undress have been banned in major cities. We just hope all this publicity right ahead of the June 12 release won't harm its box-office! [Observer]

• Karl Lagerfeld, Olivier Theyskens, and Alber Elbaz are rumored to be doing a grand fashion switcheroo. According to fashion writer Diane Pernet, Lagerfeld hasn't renewed his contract at Chanel, and Elbaz, of Lanvin, is going to take his place. Theyskens won't go to Schiaparelli, as previously thought, and instead will take the reins at Lanvin. Just wrap your head around that for a minute. [ASVOF]
• Proctor & Gamble is ending distribution of Max Factor makeup in the United States. [WWD]
• A nude photo of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy auctioned in Berlin sold for $19,600. It had been estimated to fetch $3,568-$4,997. [AP]
• André Leon Talley says that Anna Wintour was "thrilled" with Morley Safer's softly-lit, mostly softball 60 Minutes profile — this despite the fact that Safer essentially called Wintour a "bitch" to her face. Talley did puzzle at some of Safer's takes on the various designers and models he met in the course of his research — he memorably said Karl Lagerfeld "this season favors a Dracula look." "He's had that look for eight years!" laughed Talley. [Mediabistro]
• Model Daisy Lowe: "I'm going to get old and wrinkly, and when I'm older I'm going to put on loads of weight, and I'm excited about it. I think it's just really important to remember that you aren't your face." [Telegraph]
• Designer Charlotte Ronson: "i lost my favorite black vintage sweatshirt at Avenue in ny last night. Please if anyone finds it contact me. there will be a reward." [CJRonson's Twitter]
• Linda Evangelista says that lip liner and a slick of gloss is a much more "modern" look than lipstick. Okay. [MSN]
• Creative director Esteban Cortazar is said to be on his way out at the troubled house of Ungaro. Although Lindsay Lohan is not, as had been rumored, in the running for any kind of creative position, C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige favors her, or another celebrity, as a face of the brand. This marketing strategy was not to the 25-year-old Columbian designer's liking. [WWD]
• Jason Wu showed his resort collection yesterday in New York, and some of the editors who came to watch it did not eat any of the hors d'oeuvres. Shocking fashion behavior, that! [P6]
• Banana Republic is going to launch a men's and women's fragrance duo, to be called Republic Collection. [WWD]
• Pictures of the Hotel Missoni in Edinburgh, the first of three currently planned Missoni-designed hotels, are now available. It looks nice. Single rooms start around $289 per night. [Hotel Missoni]
• For those of you who appreciate good design, have several homes, and enjoy the sun (but not the surf), Rosa Cha has a line of beach wear that can't get wet. Although Raquel Welch has already bought up all their $1,200 leather bikinis (joke), and a $1,900 caftan also already sold out, the designer's Swarovski-studded bathers are still available, at $3,200 for a maillot and $1,200 for a bikini. "The people that buy the pieces are people who, well, can definitely afford these kinds of items," said store manager Christina Delice. Indeed. [UPI]
• First order of business for Roberto Cavalli and Clessidra SpA, the private equity fund he just agreed (in a non-binding way) to sell 30% of his business to, is finding a C.E.O. Apparently, they already have a shortlist, although we don't know who's on it. Versace, whose C.E.O Giancarlo di Risio is expected to tender his resignation to the board at its meeting in Milan today, isn't in any such hurry. The company is understood to be still drafting its list of potential leaders. [WWD]
• Abercrombie & Fitch experienced a 28% drop in same-store sales for the month of May. Stock fell by 13% after the announcement. [The Street]
• Madewell, the slightly-less-expensive J. Crew outpost, is going to launch an e-commerce site in its name by the first quarter of next year, said C.E.O. Mickey Drexler. Let's hope it works a little better than the regular J. Crew site. [WWD]
• Although Orla Kiely's privately held company is not obligated to disclose its sales and revenue figures publicly, the designer says her business is going gangbusters, recession be damned. Her housewares line for Target is especially successful. [NY Times]
• A Pennsylvania woman who patented her design for a bra that would provide uplift and a smooth silhouette, and then sought out Victoria's Secret as a potential manufacturing partner, says that the company instead consulted with her long enough to steal the idea. She is suing. [UPI]

• Hilary Rhoda: Estée Lauder spokesmodel with a thing for drugstore makeup. A woman after our own hearts. [Daily Beast]
• In other news from model-land, Adriana Lima might be pregnant. [NYDN]
• Also said to be expecting: Gisele Bundchen. [NYDN]
• And sources say Kate Moss could be birthing a "novel." [Sun]

• Givenchy's Fall/Winter campaign, shot this time by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott after nine seasons in the hands of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, features newcomer model Ranya Mordanova and her distinctive bowl cut. [WWD]
• Stefan Persson, the Swedish owner of H&M, is in the final stages of a $40 million deal to buy an entire village in Britain. Linkenholt, its manor estate, cricket grounds, town hall, forest, surrounding farm land, and all 21 current residents' homes, will become Persson's. Curiously, the neighboring town of Andover was the site, in 994, of the confirmation of Viking King Olaf Tryggvason, who, in following the religious ceremony and the receipt of other gifts, promised King Ethelred the Unready that he would stop raiding England. (The Viking king was technically Norwegian, not Swedish, but it's still an odd coincidence.) [UPI]
• Another country estate, this one in Scotland, with a fashion connection, is to be restored by its owner. Rundown Rosehall House, which was decorated by Coco Chanel in the 1920s, is going to be turned into a luxury country club under a £3 million renovation plan. [Daily Express]
• At Dior's party for Marion Cotillard at Cannes, Alex de Betak, who produces shows for the major houses, revealed that he's curating an exhibition dedicated to fashion shows that will unfurl in 3-D at the NRW Forum in Dusseldorf in July. Expect references to the now in-again late 80s/early 90s: "There are shows that made a big impression on me before I even started out, like the Thierry Mugler with the motorbike and George Michael or Gaultier's shows at the Villette where girls were coming out of the floor. Those were so memorable." [WWD]
• Cartier filed and withdrew a lawsuit against Apple in the same day. The jewelry house alleged that two iPhone applications infringed on its trademark Tank watches; Apple removed the apps from its online store. [WSJ]
• John Duerden, the new CEO of Crocs, a company which was supposed to be bankrupt already after losing $22.4 million in the first quarter of this year alone, thinks the company can be saved with aggressive cost-cutting and a thorough pruning of its inventory. [WWD]
• The rejected Aquascutum buyout may have been the company's last chance for survival. Former chief executive Kim Winser, who transformed Pringle into a fashion brand before taking over Aquascutum three years ago, had wanted to buy the venerable English house from its current Japanese owners, Renown, which is looking to spin off the brand as part of company-wide restructuring. Now, 400 jobs and the company's pension obligations are in jeopardy. [FT]
• Fellow iconic British label Burberry Prorsum will show in London, not Milan, this September, to mark the 25th anniversary of London Fashion Week and the British Fashion Council. [WWD]
• Rumors of a rift between Donatella Versace, creative director, and Giancarlo di Risio, chief executive, over Versace's falling fortunes and recession strategy have been denied "unanimously and categorically" by the company board. Di Risio was said to be on the point of leaving the company. Versace has so far refused to adapt much to the new patterns of consumer spending, emphatically not lowering its prices. The company believes that discounting would harm its luxury brand identity in the long term; sales have plummeted, even relative to the overall troubled high-end fashion market, with revenue falling 13.4% in the first quarter of 2009. [FT]
• Saks's CEO has pledged to offer more low-priced items following a 27% decline in sales in the first quarter. Lanvin, meanwhile, has just announced that it made $9.9 million in profits during 2008, a year for which sales grew 29%. [WWD]
• Nordstrom's prices are already an average of 10% lower than they were one year ago. [WWD]
• For his part, John Varvatos has one question he'd like to ask God, assuming s/he exists: "When is the economy going to turn around?" [The Fashion Informer]
• Sergio Rossi has a new president and CEO: Christophe Mélard. [WWD]
• Guthy Renker Australia, which, there as here, sells skincare products, including Proactiv and Principal Secret, via infomercial, lost AU$15 million last year. The American parent company has had to guarantee its debts. [News.com.au]
• Ittierre, the troubled Italian fashion company that Roberto Cavalli blamed for the cancellation of his Fall/Winter Just Cavalli show this February, has renewed its licensing deal not only with Cavalli, but with C'N'C, Costume National's diffusion brand. [WWD]

• Carine Roitfeld: "You know it's easier to look great in a dress when you are skinny. But I like a bit of curves and I like to do stories with different kinds of women...

• ... Because I see beauty in everyone." Can anyone remember the last time a French Vogue spread used a plus-size model? Because I cannot. [Fashionologie]
• Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd allegedly "chucked a wobbly" — in the native patois — when, while visiting Afghanistan, he wasn't able to blow-dry his hair prior to a photo op. [Times of London]

• Meanwhile, Gordon Brown wears four different kinds of foundation and bronzer, according to a step-by-step makeup guide left in the back of a taxi by an aide. [Daily Beast]
• Michelle Obama wore Michael Kors to the White House Correspondents Dinner, in case anyone is interested. Christian Slater, also in attendance, brushed up on his U.S. history: "I learned that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day within hours of each other 50 years from signing the Declaration of Independence." [WWD]
• Business Week found the factory in China that makes a shoe Michelle Obama wore once last fall — the Bandolino "Berry" pump — and the management there reports that its U.S. shipments have increased by 50% this year on last. Imagine this woman's effects scaled industry-wide. [BusinessWeek]
• Speaking of which, the First Lady's de facto stylist, Ikram Goldman, is reported to have ordered a white tuxedo from Martin Margiela. Michelle's probably steering clear of the Belgian designer's human-hair coats and comb minidresses, however. [Metro]
• To heighten excitement for its resort collection, which will be presented in no doubt lavish circumstances in Venice this Thursday, Chanel uploaded a video of Lara Stone and Baptiste Giabiconi trying on the collection while Karl Lagerfeld directs and Miles Davis plays. (Moderately NSFW.) [Fashionologie]
• Kylie Minogue is doing a guest spot on next week's Britain's Next Top Model. [Mirror]
• Adriana Lima recommends boxing for health. Insert your own knock-out pun here. [People]
• Forever 21 knocked off Lanvin. Given the original t-shirt cost somewhere north of $600 US — it was 3% silk! — and given Alber Elbaz's firm position against doing a diffusion line of his own, it's hard to raise much ire about this. But has anyone at this chain ever had an idea of their own? [Fashionista]
• There was another high-end robbery in London's West End last night. This time, thieves targeted the Harvey Nichols, and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Garrard jewelry. An Anya Hindmarch store in the same neighborhood was burglarized last week, to the tune of £45,000. [UK Vogue]
• Union employees at Hart Schaffner Marx's Chicago factory are threatening a sit-in if the new owners of their bankrupt parent company, Hartmarx, move towards liquidation. [WWD]

• Michelle Obama will not attend the CFDA Fashion Awards, despite the fact that she is receiving the CFDA's Board of Directors' Special Tribute (an award they made up especially for her). [WWD]

• A few months back, Peaches Geldof obligingly posed for a News of the World paparazzo while frolicking topless in St. Tropez. (The things you must do for cash in this economy!) Lingerie brand Ultimo noticed the shots, and offered Peaches six figures to be its new face. Which is why there are now pictures of the 20-year-old noted Nylon correspondent lying on a table in her underwear, surrounded by cupcakes and milkshakes, and giving quotes about how it's better for her to model lingerie than "an anorexic model." Tell that to the Photoshopper, doll. [Daily Mail]
• Supposedly, despite the global financial crisis and the recession it has spawned, the Chinese are still buying luxury goods. Either that, or the AP found the one lady in Beijing who can still afford Dior. [AP]
• Lanvin and Kate Spade, however, see business opportunities in Japan. (Have they read any economic news out of Japan recently?) [WWD]
• Donatella Versace went to the White House Correspondents' Dinner — her second — and reflected on the differences between the last administration and the current one. (The Obamas made sure to have "cool" Hollywood people, not "stiff" Hollywood people, at their party, for one.) Then she met Colin Powell, who is apparently her "hero." [HuffPo]
• Tim Gunn was also in Washington, D.C., this week — as a lobbyist. The CFDA sent Gunn, along with Project Runway Season 5 winner Leanne Marshall, to talk to politicians about the recently re-introduced Design Piracy Bill, which would extend copyright protection to clothing. (At the moment, images printed on clothes can be copyrighted, because they're considered artwork, and an exact pattern can be copyrighted, but all the other distinctive design features of a garment can be legally copied by any manufacturer.) Gunn was soon besieged with questions from Hill staffers about how to spruce up their outfits. [NY Observer]
• This fall, you too can smell like Akon. In two different ways. [WWD]
• Katy Perry: "Usually, I'm trying to look like a party." [People]
• If you care about Gossip Girl, which I hear is a television show people watch, sometimes, then perhaps you would like to read this article about how, during the soap opera's 80s flashback scenes, the characters dress in clothes. From the 80s. [WWD]
• Suzy Menkes — writer of that terrible story on the "African" fashion trend — thinks blogs are great. But that they get things wrong. No argument there! But since when are newspapers any different? A commenter on this story promptly identified an error in a four-year-old piece Menkes wrote for the New York Times. [The Cut]
• If you wear a size 16 in Ann Taylor or Ann Taylor Loft clothing, after this spring — wait, that's, like, right now! — you'll need to go online to find it. The company says they will no longer stock size 16 in stores because of lack of consumer demand, which seems awfully fishy when you remember that 70% of American women are a size 12 or above. Ann Taylor thus joins Banana Republic and J. Crew in selling size 16 only online. [Crain's]
• Jenna Lyons, the creative director of J. Crew, comes across as the kind of person who thrives under stress in this interview. [Fashionista]
• The inaugural Ellen Tracy intimates collection will be available in stores this December. [WWD]
• Betsey Johnson is into designing a diffusion line for Target or "whatever it's called." HSN, QVC, Topshop, H&M — anything, really, she swears. Call her. Please. [The Cut]
• Zaha Hadid for Lacoste shoes look like a rubber octopus with a foot fetish. [WWD]
• Puma's sales actually increased 3.6% in the first quarter of this year, but its overall net income fell 93.8% on figures from two years ago. [WWD]
• Troubled retailer Abercrombie & Fitch is taking over a 4,300 square foot space on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue — only three blocks south of its current flagship store. Hickey Freeman, the menswear store, is forced to close its old flagship at 666 Fifth because of the bankruptcy of its parent company, Hartmarx, and Abercrombie is apparently only too happy to take it over. [WWD]
• John Varvatos — the designer who made CBGB's a store selling $2,000 jackets — just laid off 12 people, or 4% of his workforce. [WWD]
• Scientists at Virginia Tech have created a fabric that can measure the speed, motion, and direction of its movements, and transmit those data to a computer. Science is magic, guys. [Advanced Imaging Pro]
• A makeup artist for The Bold And The Beautiful thinks women will go for putting her own special brand of concealer on their feet to hide corns and calluses. To which I say: Why not do that with the foundation you already own, should you feel such a step be necessary? And: Makeup smudges on my lovely shoes? No thanks. The brave ladies of The Cut road-tested the execrable product. Warning: click only if you want to see pictures of feet before lunchtime. [The Cut]

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

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

• Naomi Campbell stalked the runway like a thoroughbred in Mumbai for a charity show. Last time Campbell blended fashion and philanthropy, the supermodel raised over $1 million for Hurricane Katrina survivors. [Daily Mail]

• Mikhail Gorbachev is not enough for some people. The rapacious machine of Louis Vuitton's advertising, which most people don't realize actually sucks its subjects' dignity through the lens of Annie Liebovitz's Canon, has claimed more victims: Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride, and fellow astronaut Jim Lovell. That's right: men and women who could withstand the g-forces of extraterrestrial flight could not say 'no' to LVMH. [WWD]
• British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman says her biggest concern about taking the position back in 1992 was that it would involve a lot of flying. "I hadn't been on a plane in 10 years," she said at an event in England. "How could I accept a job that would mean that I had to fly all the time? I'm still very nervous on a plane." [Vogue UK]
• More bad news for Halston: the oft-revived label, left semi-conscious as of late following the firing of its latest creative director, Marco Zanini, is now down one vice-president of marketing. Atul Pathak resigned two weeks ago, just after the Paris shows. [WWD]
• Los Angeles fashion week happened recently. Don't feel too badly if you missed it: the LA Times itself called proceedings "more than an exercise in futility." [LA Times]
• Vera Wang's Lavender line is in trouble. Hitting the high end of the price range for a contemporary line is causing some grief, and Saks has dropped it. Neiman Marcus will carry Vera Wang Lavender in only ten stores this season, and drop it for fall. Wang says she's mulling over lowering the pricing, or spinning it off into a license. [WWD]
• Lanvin's London flagship store is now open. I suppose that means Alber Elbaz's long contretemps with the architects, related by Ariel Levy in her recent New Yorker profile of the designer, was happily resolved. [FWD]
• Kira Plastinina's still got stores a-plenty, too. (Albeit not in the US, where her eponymous pink-themed clothing chain went bust less than a year after her entry into the market.) As soon as she finishes high school in Moscow this spring, the fruit juice heiress intends to take a step that most designers tackle before launching international retail chains — going to fashion school. Since Kira Plastinina rather strikes one as the kind of person whose life is the sustained experience of getting what she wants, without regard for talent or even passion, she's expecting acceptance at Parsons in New York and Central St. Martins in London, the Yale and Oxford of fashion design, respectively. [FWD]
• Fiona Ellis, who scouts models for the London agency Independent, thinks Tyra's shorties-only season of America's Next Top Model is dumb. The woman who found Alek Wek and Erin O'Connor, among many others, would know. [Vogue UK]
• Net profits at Versace fell 30.7% in 2008, but it was largely due to the softening of the Euro against the Dollar. Without the hard shift in the rate of exchange, their profits would have grown by 10%. [WWD]
• "Heavy black lines and crisp, grid-like patterns created an Op Art effect in Dries Van Noten's spring collection," says the LA Times. Which is why you should...wear a plaid shirt from Express. [LA Times]
• The top 10 new models of the Fall/Winter 09 show season: 90% white, 10% Japanese, 50% not actually "new." [Style.com]
• Do. Not. Want. Spanx clothing. No, just...no. [Glamour]
• Christian Siriano has picked up one hell of a stockist for his line: Saks Fifth Avenue. The department store will sell his fall collection in a new store-within-a-store for emerging talents. [WWD]
• Iekeliene Stange, the quirky Dutch supermodel/photographer, has an exhibition opening in London this Wednesday, following a successful show in Berlin. [The Horse Hospital]

See, fashion is an industry based on image. Do you follow? Because, W has noticed, one of the effects of this is that people who work in fashion tend to be judged on how they dress. Kind of a lot, even. So many of them take the question of what to wear very seriously! And journalists, well, they find it interesting to write about in great detail without even a hint of the broader economic outlook or the narrowness of the audience that regularly wears $300 t-shirts from The Row and Lanvin flats.

Journalist Vanessa Lawrence's premise is almost too simple to be believed. "Working in fashion," she writes, "necessitates being fashionable from the moment you leave the house. And it is an implicit requirement that can prove exhausting for even the most passionate of clotheshorses....But when the weekend rolls around, they are faced with a dilemma: how to keep up appearances while giving their Yves Saint Laurent Tributes and Balenciaga sheaths a breather-if they choose to do so. Between trips to the gym, brunch dates and grocery store excursions, that 48-hour stretch is hardly a time for hibernation."

That's right. When you work in fashion, in addition to needing always to look your best, you might need to dress differently on different occasions. For instance, the weekend. Or the Hamptons! And any forays to distant nations — like the Upper East Side of New York, also known as "10021 land," where people wear these things called "blazers" and look "decked." What's a fashion worker bee to do?

Weirdly enough, everyone Lawrence quotes still seems to dress really well on the weekends. "When I'm in the Hamptons getting stuff at Citarella on the weekends, I'll see fashion girls who are in Marni and Lanvin in the daytime and I'm in a Tracy Feith cotton dress, Jack Rogers sandals and a ponytail," says designer Shoshanna Gruss, whose idea of 'weekend casual' is wholly relative. Others seem not to grasp Lawrence's issue: "French people don't really ‘underdress' on the weekends," remarks a confused Julia Restoin-Roitfeld.

There are plenty of moments of hilarity as the reporter valiantly tries to get a handle on the problem of what to wear in one's off hours. "Gruss's appropriately pulled-together look extends beyond Long Island summers to her Upper East Side residence," writes Lawrence; what range.

The thing is, anyone who spends a lot of time with magazine editors and stylists and General Fashion Personages knows a few things. For one, most of them do not have a lot of money — certainly not enough to be dropping $800 on stilettos every season. (Whether you've got a friendly quid pro quo going with a label's PR depeartment, or something occasionally goes missing from the styling closet is another issue.) For another, most of these people wear the same things every day. All-black ensembles are the norm, not the exception — because it's easy to look stylish in a dark monochrome, and you can switch out accessories without anything clashing, which is crucial if you spend a lot of time traveling and need to look like you have more outfits than you actually do. There are remarkably few people in fashion who consistently dress in ways that turn heads; pretty much everyone just wants to be stylish and look as nice as they can while they're working.

Which is fine, and normal, and fun — and the total opposite of the sort of sartorial-psychological weekend arms race Lawrence's article conveniently invents and then lavishes with attention, perpetuating the myth that all fashion folk are better-dressed than anyone else, and at all times. The real story is told in the pictures that accompany it: they're little images of the article's subject, photographed going about their daily lives, working in the fashion industry. Nobody looks bad — there's Charlotte Ronson at an event in a white dress and a black cardigan; Restoin-Roitfeld in denim shorts, a blue Oxford, and a blazer; Kate Etter in ballet flats, leggings, a green tunic and a long sweater. But nobody looks "fancy" or as purposefully styled as Lawrence's article implies is the industry norm. These look like outfits that have been doing reliable service in various forms for seasons already, and which will continue to see the light of day for a long time into the future. Bags and shoes might wash over Bryant Park like a tide each season, but a good pair of black pants is for the ages. And even people who work in fashion have enough good sense to know they can be worn on the weekends and to work.

Cartoon illustration via W

Weekend Warriors [W]

Elbaz, who has long won accolades for designs that consistently hit at the sweet spot of the continuum between beautiful and interesting, started off in the industry working on "horrible mother-of-the-bride dresses" in New York's garment district. Given a leg up by Geoffrey Beene, who took him on as an assistant, Elbaz eventually earned his first head designer position at Guy Laroche in 1997. A stop at YSL followed, but what Elbaz is known for is the eight years he has now spent at Lanvin.

In the pages of the New Yorker's Style Issue, Levy captures Elbaz's uneasy relationship with the images of luxury he so skilfully creates. Elbaz is 47, and, Levy writes, "there seems to be something fundamental about him in need of comforting." He is also overweight, and in a moment that must ring familiar to almost any woman on earth, Levy observes him dithering over his breakfast order at the Carlyle Hotel: " 'Should we be good today or bad? Maybe we start good and get bad later.' He ordered the fruit salad. He wanted the pancakes."

Some designers are, or at least seem, to the manner born: Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren, and Tom Ford, et. al., embody the moneyed ease and supreme self-assurance their particular labels sell. Other talents clearly retain something closer to an outsider's perspective, some sense of a life beyond the lifestyle evidenced through frumpy outfits or quiet demeanors. (Some designers, like Marc Jacobs, start up in one camp and end up in the other — the early Jacobs, with his nerd glasses, pallor, and paunch is orders of magnitude away from the contemporary gym-toned, tanned, health-farm Jacobs; it's like looking at an El Greco and then a Botticelli.) Elbaz is clearly in the more modest category. He compares his job shaping the dreams and expectations of the select group of women that are his customers to working as a concierge in a fancy hotel — the concierge being the person who has to go home at night. "You have to go back to reality. You have to go back to nothing in order to maintain the dream," he says. "The moment the dream becomes reality and you start to mingle too much with all these people..."

Photo by Tim Walker

Levy's profile really heats up when she contrasts Elbaz's aesthetic with that of Tom Ford, who took the Moroccan-born Israeli's job at YSL Rive Gauche a few months after Gucci Group's acquisition of the brand in 1999. (Yves Saint Laurent had at the time been grooming Elbaz as his successor.) Ford, in Levy's construction, was the spirit guide and permanent booster of the ra-ra bling-bling late 1990s and early 2000s, while Elbaz was the quiet talent cut out for more unassuming times.

Ford could not have been a more maddening foil. Where Elbaz was pudgy and Jewish and self-doubting, Ford was toned and tan and Texan. Elbaz is shy and still not exactly a household name; when Ford guest-edited an issue of Vanity Fair, in 2006, he put himself on the cover, flanked by Scarlett Johanson and Keira Knightley in the nude. Perhaps most significant, Elbaz has always presented in his work a quiet, complicated conception of female sexuality. One of Ford's more memorable ads as the designer for Gucci featured a woman [Estonian supermodel Carmen Kass] pulling down her underwear to reveal the letter "G" shaved out of her pubic hair.

Perhaps the New Yorker's sense of propriety forbade Levy from mentioning Ford's other boundary-stretching campaign of the period, when, during his time with YSL Rive Gauche, he chose to advertise the men's fragrance M7 with a full-frontal nude portrait of martial arts champion Samuel de Cubber.

"But," writes Levy, "little by little, as the money and the grandiose sense of self-assurance of that era fell away, Ford's sensibility came to seem less stylish." The writer narrates Ford's retirement from women's fashion and the Gucci Group, in 2004, and mentions that a pair of cufflinks she recently browsed in Ford's eponymous Manhattan men's wear store costs $34,000. Her conclusion:

In our current moment, Tom Ford, with his tan, and his cufflinks that cost as much as a car, and his naked-man-on-bearskin-rug aesthetic, seems distant and comical. He has become Bijan. And Alber Elbaz has gradually won.

If Levy's skewering of Tom Ford, whose idea of recession-friendly pricing is a pair of jeans that costs $990, is a delight of schadenfreude, it's also a little easy. Elbaz, and his aesthetic, were never in any mortal danger after being cut loose from YSL; the designer walked into a dream position at Lanvin, where the label owner's only instruction was to "Please wake the sleeping beauty" less than a year later. Moreover, Elbaz's clothes for Lanvin are every bit as expensive as Tom Ford's were for Rive Gauche and Gucci. It's difficult to imagine many women who can admit a $4,000+ sheath dress into their wardrobes without hardship.

Elbaz explains the huge cost of his garments in terms of their materials and workmanship — which is true to a point. (The markups that retailers typically add, which can be 60-70% over wholesale prices, go unmentioned by both Levy and Elbaz.) Elbaz, who alternates in the profile between the airy fashion-speak of one who spends his life on the astral plane of aesthetics, and more articulate quotes, analogizes making a dress with the research and development requirements of pharmaceutical companies. "Doing a collection, for me, is almost like creating a vaccine," he says. "Once you create the vaccine, then you can duplicate it for nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. But see if you can create it for nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, and the answer is no. In that sense, I have absolutely no problem with the prices. I don't think we do it just to do it." (It's also worth pointing out that the Lanvin atelier is located in France, where garment workers earn a middle-class living, and where Elbaz claims his company pays 65% taxes.)

The designer has said in the past that he does not care to design the dress that will make a man fall in love with a woman; he wants to make the dress that a woman wears when she falls in love herself. But I'm not sure the rhetorical inversion necessarily works: although I appreciate woman-centered design, that departs from the first principles of the wearer and her needs and desires, as opposed to those of the implicit male observer of the dress, whoever knows ahead of time when they're going to fall in love? A dress to make you more loving is a curious idea indeed.

At times, Elbaz seems flinty and difficult, which can often be the downside to being a visionary (at least for those who surround you). When he visits a potential site for his fall/winter show with his team, a former load-out station in the 13th Arrondissement, Elbaz speaks in a stream-of-consciousness that must be impossible to parse. "I had many, many thoughts. The dogs. The black car waiting outside. The man with the white coat and the dirty hands. The crystal on the floor and the train station just in the back. I'm looking for something to clean my eyes!" He muses for a while on the "bad spirit" of the warehouse space, before, in what comes across as a self-pitying gesture for its very unseriousness, momentarily contemplating leaving fashion. There's also an episode over some handbags which aren't to his liking, and an hours-long meeting with the team of architects who are at work on his London store, in which he exclaims, "If a woman comes in and it doesn't smell right or the light isn't right, she will think the dress doesn't look good!" Elbaz sometimes seems like that maddening boss who expects everyone to do the right thing but cannot articulate what it is.

All in all, I think Levy's thesis — that women have moved beyond Tom Ford's sexy dresses, and into the prim refinement of Lanvin under Elbaz — isn't entirely spot-on. Any woman, no matter her career or age, wants at least occasionally to look hot; if that note is missing on Elbaz's scale, it's a lack. And it's a heartbreaking statement about women in general that Elbaz should have such a presumed accord with our needs because he personally understands feelings of physical inadequacy. (When Levy asks him what his life would be like if he were thin, Elbaz doesn't skip a beat: "Amazing.") But Elbaz's work as the concierge of Lanvin, ironically, displays all the assurance he himself can't seem to muster. He never exhibits the clumsy pretty-ugly tics of Miuccia Prada — he knows real women don't want to look dowdy. His idea of sexy is never louche, like Roberto Cavalli's. His clothes are tailored, but not restrictive like the work of Roland Mouret. Intellectual touches don't impede wearability, as they can at Comme des Garçons. ("If it's not edible, it's not food," says Elbaz. "If it's not wearable, it's not fashion.") Alber Elbaz's work, for those who can afford it, is classic without the connotation of dustiness. And it's nice to get to know, at least a little, the fevered, nervous, visionary personality behind the curtain.

Ladies' Man [New Yorker — sub req'd]
Ariel Levy On The Designer Alber Elbaz — Audio Slideshow [New Yorker]
Lanvin Fall/Winter 09 Collection [Style.com]