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• 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]

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• Today in pointless clothing lines of the stars: Miley Cyrus and Max Azria's Wal-Mart collection! The digs look well worth every penny of their sub-$20 price point. [Lucky]
• Now, even the Kings of Leon has one. [Blackbook]

• Lady Gaga wants in on the action. On starting a clothing line, she told Flare magazine, "At some point, I will. Right now, I'm more concerned with using my fame to promote young designers such as Gary Card, an artist who designed a piece I used on stage." Why would she do such a thing? "There hasn't been a commercial artist lately that has embodied avant-garde and couture so insistently as myself." [ONTD]
• Gaga has one new position to console herself with: M.A.C. Viva Glam AIDS fund face. Cyndi Lauper will co-star in the campaign to sell lipstick and raise money for research. [WWD]
• The British Fashion Council and British Vogue are launching a fashion prize to encourage young talent, somewhat along the lines of the American Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund awards, which kicked off in 2003. £200,000 will be awarded to one UK designer who can demonstrate he or she has international stockists, a media profile, and demonstrated need of the money. [Telegraph]
• Angelina Jolie and Shiloh are apparently fans of Stella McCartney's line for GapKids. [Radaronline]
• That Christian Louboutin made his first public appearance in Washington, D.C., under Obama's watch is no coincidence. "For eight years I was invited, but I never wanted to come before. I never wanted to come with Bush," says the shoe designer. "I'm looking forward to coming back — at least for four years." We really want to make a crack about voting with your feet here. [WaPo]
• Roberto Cavalli: "All over the world people don't treat me like a fashion designer; they treat me like a rock star… I can't walk down 5th Avenue without being treated like a rock star. In fact, maybe it's more… Many times I've walked down 5th Avenue with rock stars and nobody pays attention to them. It's very strange." [FWD]
• Gisele Bundchen passed the written exam portion of her pilot's license. Although heavily pregnant, and "Almost too big to fly," according to her instructor, she's still making supervised practice flights up to three days a week. [People]
• Karolina Kurkova has given birth to a baby boy. [People]
• Kelly Osborne: Fan of Spanx. [People]
• Christian Siriano says his new reality TV show will reflect the best of several recent high-profile fashion documentaries. "It's very like The September Issue, very Valentino [The Last Emperor]. We want it to be as cool and as real as possible." Apparently, September Issue director R.J. Cutler wouldn't touch the project, but he did advise Siriano "just to be real." [The Cut]
• Sadie Frost's clothing line with Jemima French, FrostFrench, is opening its second store in London's Soho. [WWD]
• A real ad man of the 1960s has some bones to pick with Mad Men's treatment of the brand London Fog. So an employee of an industry that manufactures fictions objects to a fictional show's fictionalizing history? We shake our heads at the irony. [AdAge]
• JC Penney is being sued for trademark infringement by the retailer New York & Company. New York & Company says Penney's new "NYC Style" slogan is too close to its "NY Style" advertising tag line. [WWD]
• Can Sir Philip Green conquer America? [Bloomberg]
• Polo Ralph Lauren reported a 10% rise in second-quarter profits. [TS]
• Bata shoes was, before Communism, an international brand headquartered in Slovakia. The company town isn't doing so hot right now, with the economic transition and the competition from Asia. [BussinessWeek]
• Liz Claiborne may have had seven consecutive quarterly losses, with the announcement of an eight expected next week, but C.E.O. Bill McCombs doesn't have to worry about one thing: his job security. McCombs recently had his contract renewed for another three years. It's not an unusual strategy: only 38 companies in the S&P 500 have replaced their C.E.O.'s in the year to September 30, down 10 on the same period last year, despite the trying economic times. [WSJ]
• Not so lucky is Missoni's general manager, Massimo Gasparini. He has been let go and his position will not be filled. [WWD]

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• "No one wants to see curvy women," says Karl Lagerfeld, who has struggled with his weight. "You've got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly." [News.com.au]

• Meanwhile, Christian Louboutin gave Barbie a much-needed slimming treatment. The three dolls the designer is releasing will have an all-new morphology, because the shoe man "found her ankles were too fat," reports a spokesperson. [WWD]
• Heidi Klum says becoming a Barbie was "a dream come true." There's a horror movie in that somewhere. [People]
• Tom Cruise says sweet, underminey things to Katie Holmes about her clothes, like, "I think that dress might be wearing you." The only question remaining is: Is he responsible for Suri's clothing choices? [NYDN]
• Trovata and Forever 21 have settled their copyright infringement lawsuit, just days before a second trial was to begin. The terms are confidential. Despite being sued more than 50 times, Forever 21 had never faced a jury prior to the Trovata case; Trovata had sought a multi-million-dollar judgment against Forever 21 for knocking off its shirts, but the first trial in May ended in a mistrial when six jurors sided with Trovata and one sided with Forever 21. [WWD]
• The Daily Mail did a hilarious write-around on Dov Charney, The Sleazy Sexual Predator Behind High Street Store American Apparel. Wait till they realize that the "model" in the lace bodysuit ad they hold up for particular condemnation — "it is the kind of photograph which would send shivers down the spine of anyone with a teenage daughter" — is in fact an actual porn star named Faye Valentine. We can't wait for the blistering, "exclusive" follow-up. [Daily Mail]
• Marc Jacobs: "I think the idea of people being exposed, whether it's stylists who have their reality shows or whatever, is just the way of the world. It's every chef, every stylist, every hairdresser, everybody who's doing plastic surgery. We're in a period where people are entertained by what they consider to be the real lives of people in different professions, etc. And fashion has also reached this kind of proportion like football or sport, you know — a spectator sport." [WWD]
• W magazine is reducing its frequency from 12 to 6 issues per year. This is fueling rumors that Condé Nast might be interested in buying American Elle. [FWD]
• Ugg Australia is releasing a "limited-edition" kids collection as a tie-in for the Where The Wild Things Are movie. Half the proceeds will go to St. Jude's Research Hospital. Which means half will go to making more ugly Uggs. [WWD]
• Levi's is snapping up young(ish), hip(ish) artists of both coasts in the scramble for sales: after having Ryan McGinley shoot its new ad campaign, the company has announced that printmaker extraordinaire Shepard Fairey will have a capsule collection in stores by the end of this month under the label Obey x Levi's. [WWD]
• Turns out that with the move to selling exclusively at J.C. Penney, Liz Claiborne isn't closing the Claiborne by John Bartlett line — it's just firing two-time CFDA-winner John Bartlett less than halfway into his three-year contract. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, the Upper East Side has hatched another fashion label. Two people who really need the money — socialites Gigi Mortimer and Courtney Moss — want us to buy $199 rabbit fur neck warmers and $315 fox fur gloves. Oh, look: Kelly Killoren Bensimon is all over their website! [WWD]
• Women's Wear Daily puts on its thinking cap to investigate this question for the ages: Has fashion lost its mystique? Is it the reality television? Is it the Internet? Is it Marc Jacobs inviting reporters to work out with him? The story quotes an Internet commenter, and Valentino. [WWD]
• Diane von Furstenberg is mounting an exhibition of her life's work in Moscow later this month. It will include garments she designed, artifacts, and portraits of her by artists including Warhol and Horst. [WWD]

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

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

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• Creator of this season's mightiest shoes, Alexander McQueen, is suing Steve Madden. McQueen's lawyers say the only reason the Madden is a knock-off and not a pure counterfeit is the omission of the logo'd zipper pull. (L-R: McQueen, Madden.) [WWD]

• There are pictures and renderings of Domenico Dolce's just-bought $29 million Manhattan penthouse. It looks predictably lavish; it even has an elevator for the designer's car. [FWD]
• Christian Lacroix will design another day! Al Hassan Bin Al Nuaimi, a United Arab Emirates sheikh, has worked out a deal to buy the bankrupt company from its owners, the Falic Group. If the deal is approved by the French bankruptcy court, it is understood that the house will continue to produce the couture collection for which it had been known. [WWD]
• Strokes member Albert Hammond, Jr., finally has pictures of his suit line. It looks pretty snazzy, albeit laughably priced, at $2,100-$2,400. [Style.com]
• Before Mounir Moufarrige, the CEO of Ungaro, hired Lindsay Lohan as the house's "artistic director," he asked her how long she planned on spending in prison. That's due diligence! [ToL]
• Speaking of non-formally-trained designers: "I cannot drape. I mean I cannot cut patterns. But I know exactly what I want and where the shoulder should be and where the seams should be," says 70-year-old Carolina Herrera. "And it's the eye you have to have for the colours, to mix colours, or proportions ... It was born in me. Because I didn't go to fashion school." [Canadian Press]
• The mood among the American press at the Paris shows was said to be grim. Top editors were absent entirely, and those who did come to the continent were spending the hours between shows wrestling with decisions about the layoffs and budget cuts they will have to make upon their return. Every Condé Nast editor has been asked to reduce his or her budget by a quarter; layoffs are expected to begin tomorrow. [FWD]
• Some see signs of the budget cuts in the fact that Anna Wintour repeated an outfit three times in ten days. But she repeats outfits all the time. [CityFile]
• Since Prince is in Paris for fashion week anyway, he just announced two shows this week at the Grand Palais. [WWD]
• Hot on the heels of Claudia Schiffer's announced intention to visit Iraq comes news that Roberto Cavalli is going to Chechnya. [FWD]
  
• The staff at the Marikina Shoe Museum were able to save Imelda Marcos's footwear collection from the knee-high waters of the most recent Tropical Storm. Three hundred people may have died, and thousands may have been left homeless — but they got the shoes! [AP]
• Gavin James Bower, a Dazed & Confused intern who became a male model for two years, has written a book about his experiences, called Dazed & Aroused. He tells the Sun: "For all the press about female models being forced to conform to an unhealthy body image, and all the horror stories about apple diets and the like, the pressure to remain a certain 'look' is just the same for male models. It's just not talked about." [Sun]
• Lily Cole says acting is like walking a tightrope. "The good actor is the one who always has a moment when they nearly fall off." [Telegraph]
• Peter Brant, in divorce filings, alleges that Stephanie Seymour spends $50,000 a month on clothes. And also that she destroyed his Kentucky Derby trophy. [p6]
• Lucky Brand's holiday shopping bags are designed specially by Sir Peter Blake, the artist who did the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Guess we're over that whole hide-your-shopping-in-the-plain-paper-of-shame thing. Happy recession everybody! [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne is going to be sold only at J.C. Penney, starting next fall. [WSJ]
• Louis Vuitton says it's on track to rise over the holiday period. [Reuters]
• Carrefour, the French retail giant, denies it is even considering selling its Chinese and Latin American operations. Because, while troubled right now, those are growth markets. Rumors are flying that investor Bernard Arnault — the head of LVMH — to cut its losses in those regions. [WWD]

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• Bono's wife Ali Hewson is suing Stella McCartney over the title of her unreleased perfume, "Nude." Hewson, who also has a sustainable fashion brand, oversees Nude Skincare, and feels that McCartney's brand is too close to her own. [Daily Mail]

• More than 100 garment workers protested two New York apparel companies in support of six workers who allege they are owed over $500,000 in back pay, and that they were wrongfully fired. Union organizer Jei Fong said, "Long Island City is a sweatshop zone; these conditions are rampant and have only gotten worse through the years. Today we really want to make a stand. People need to demand better conditions; it's the only way for the garment industry to improve." The six workers allege that they were paid minimum wage, but that their employers deducted 5% from their pay, and failed to pay any overtime despite the fact that they often worked 100 hour weeks. All the workers were fired shortly after complaining about the pay and conditions to the National Labor Relations Board. [Crain's]
• Harper's Bazaar decided to rush out a Michael Jackson-themed fashion shoot in time for the current issue — and the model they picked was Agyness Deyn? There is also a monkey. Who's bad, indeed. [ONTD]
• It took Nicole Richie less than half of the actual human gestational period to conceive of and birth her maternity wear line for A Pea In The Pod. [WWD]
• Pierre Cardin owns the Marquis de Sade's castle. [NYTimes]
• We doubt that anyone is copying P.C. from NYC Prep's style. A white t-shirt, scarf and a cardigan is something he has a copyright on? Give us a fucking break, Paper magazine. [Stylelist]
• Jason Wu has announced the location of his Spring 2010 show — the opulent St. Regis hotel. [WWD]
• Why is it that every time one or two designers cycle through to something different than previous prevailing tastes — long skirts after a few seasons of minis, or in this case, flats after a few seasons of skyscraper 7" heels — fashion writers have to act as though it's tabula rasa time and WE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN? The heel is not "dead" just because Christopher Kane now things "boyish" flats are nice. Most women will continue wearing heels sometimes, and flats other times, depending on their mood, where they are going, and the rest of their outfit. [ToL]
• Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently smitten with model Anne Vyalitsyna. Meanwhile, recent ex Bar Refaeli has been spotted with polo player Ricardo Mansur, who happens to be an ex of Gisele Bundchen, who also dated Leo. And the circle is complete. [Sun]
• Because of a write-in campaign, Men's Wearhouse is canceling its advertising on the Glenn Beck program. [MediaMatters]
• Bloomingdale's is launching a major ad campaign highlighting its links to classic films. [NYTimes]
• Last month, Kelly Bensimon told the W magazine editors' blog, of her jewelry line, "I love Navajo and I love the idea of taking Pocahontas out of the kayak and putting her into the disco. Everyone knows that she's had enough in her little canoe and now she's out and having fun in the disco." Yesterday, Kelly Bensimon told StyleList "exclusively," of her jewelry line, "The bad thing about Pocahontas is that she's, like, in the kayaks. So I took her out of the kayak and into the disco so she could have a little fun." Conclusions: Nobody reads anymore, and the Internet will eventually eat itself. And Kelly Bensimon still does not apparently realize that Pocahontas lived her entire life without ever meeting any Navajo people, because they lived thousands upon thousands of miles apart. [StyleList]
• Molly Sims now has a jewelry line. (At this point, who doesn't?) [WWD]
• Point the first: We have not heard anything of Nia Long since her immortal turn as Lisa on Fresh Prince, so her inclusion in PETA's ancient "Rather Go Naked" campaign proves the animal rights organization is scraping the very bottom of the barrel. Point the second: We get that Nia Long doesn't much care for the fur, but she seems to have no problem with gasp-inducingly unrealistic media images of women. The Photoshop job on her ad is eye-popping. Point the third: This quote speaks for itself: "There's no difference, in my opinion, [between fur and] slavery or the Holocaust." [DListed]
• Twiggy is releasing an album of pop songs on September 14. [Modelinia]
• Amber Rose posed for a series of racy photos in Complex magazine. She also told the mag: "I always looked up to Slash from Guns N' Roses. I had every single poster of Slash in my room. It was crazy because I grew up in an all-black neighborhood and everybody I went to school with was black. I was the only biracial looking girl in my school, and Slash was biracial too, he was just a fucking rock star. I always wanted to play the guitar. I've tried, but other things came up." [ONTD]
• In yet another high-yield jewelry heist, two armed robbers hit up the Graff store on New Bond St. in London for $65 million worth of baubles. Forty-three items were stolen, and while the suited robbers fired two shots and briefly took a Graff worker hostage, nobody was injured. [NYTimes]
• For reasons unknown, Maybelline has made a calendar. [Fashionista]
• The "moderately priced" designer "bridge" category — home of labels like Tory Burch, Elie Tahari, and Eileen Fisher — is losing one of its biggest players, Ellen Tracy. Starting next spring, the brand is down-shifting to concentrate on lower-priced sportswear, where it'll roll with labels like Lauren by Ralph Lauren and Michael by Michael Kors. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, members-only online sample sale site Gilt today is launching a website where it will host sales of lower-priced lines, called Gilt Fuse. In running Gilt, chief executive Susan Lyne says, "What we discovered was that, one, even though we discount significantly on the brands we carry on Gilt [up to 70 percent], it's still expensive for [our customers]. A $200 or $150 dress is still a big purchase for them." So Gilt Fuse will exert similar discounts on merchandise that was a little cheaper to begin with. Revolutionary concept, really. [NYObs]
• Escada's proposed fund-raising bond exchange has failed because fewer than 80 percent of investors approved it within the given time frame. The company plans to file for bankruptcy this week. [WWD]
• Pakistan's textile industry is suffering because of the twin ills of political instability — even consistent electrical power is not assured — and the global credit crunch. An estimated 200,000 people have lost their jobs in the textiles sector during the past year. [Reuters]
• After cutting $70 million worth of costs from its balance sheet in the first quarter, Liz Claiborne's losses still increased during the second quarter of this year — so a second, $100 million, cost-cutting plan is to be put in place. [WSJ]
• Although the sale of bankrupt men's clothier Hartmarx to Emerisque Brands and SKNL North America has managed to save 2,400 jobs that otherwise might have been lost, three plants which were not part of the sale, finalized last week, are shuttered. About 525 employees at factories in Rock Island, Illinois, Anniston, Alabama, and Hamilton, Ontario have lost their jobs. Hartmarx owns the brands Hart Shaffner Marx and Hickey Freeman. [WWD]

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

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

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• 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]

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

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

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• Eva Mendes should just drop the transparent "acting" career. The woman — Calvin Klein perfume campaign-snagger, fashion event-schmoozer, Revlon face, and Italian Vogue poseur — is, as these Calvin Klein ads further prove, basically a model now. Embrace it! [People]

• Seriously, nobody is thinking about her critically acclaimed performance in Hitch here. Also the lingerie campaign shots? Are reminiscent of the Posh & Becks his 'n' hers Emporio Armani ones. [E]
• Stop the presses: Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson might still be together because Lindsay bought Sam a clutch purse at the NoHo shop Cream & Blue. She also picked up a pair of Nikes for her brother, Cody. In other Celebrities...Go Shopping! news, Robert Pattinson nearly caused a riot when he browsed the racks at Aloha Rag in the far West Village. There's a video of the commotion, but he's not in it. [Racked]
• L.A.'s boutique for the privileged ragamuffins of the super-elite, Kitson Kids, is being sued by its landlord for some $38,000 of unpaid rent. Kitson claims it is on a kind of rent strike until the landlord makes building improvements, including furnishing "a child-safe stroller ramp" so that parents will no longer have to "put children in danger on a daily basis" by taking the rugrats up the steps. [TMZ]
• Speaking of rich youngsters, Russian orange juice heiress Kira Plastinina might be making a comeback in the U.S. The self-styled fashion designer, already successful in Russia and Eastern Europe, expanded into the U.S. retail market with much fanfare — and then, seven months later, her chain collapsed into liquidation amidst allegations of unpaid wages by former employees. The teenaged tycoon is looking at two of her old L.A. locations, under the name "K. Plastinina." [WWD]
• You know what they get to worry about across the pond, where there are no guns? "Knife crime"! It's no joke: designer Nicole Farhi was allegedly strangled into unconsciousness and robbed of jewelry outside her London home by two knife-wielding brothers. And then there's fashion design student Ryan Houlton, of the University of Salford, for whom knife crime is inspiration. His latest collection is based on the hoodies and tracksuits that knife-crime-committing street gangs wear — but, the designer is quick to point out, the clothes are "not designed for people who commit crimes." Whoever does wear these threads will definitely look sharp. [Telegraph]
• Fellow British fashion student George Davies designed a dress that lights up when the wearer's cell phone rings. Maria Sharapova unveiled it. Why would you want anything so unsubtle? [Reuters]
• Dolce & Gabbana is launching an online store on June 23. [10 Magazine]
• Jesus Luz is also set to walk in Dolce & Gabbana's menswear show in Milan this Saturday as an exclusive (translation: Jesus Luz is going to make a lot of money from doing this show, and no others.) He already bagged one campaign for the brand; could this be the beginning of a beautiful partnership? [WWD]
• Diego Della Valle, who is the founder of Tod's and a big investor in Saks Fifth Avenue, owns the Schiaparelli trademark. But, Della Valle says he does not plan on reviving the house until at least 2011. That timeline casts doubt on the rumors that Olivier Theyskens, lately of Nina Ricci, could be set to take over the brand. Inquiring minds want to know: What is the Belgian boy-wonder gonna get up to instead? [WWD]
• When Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler guest-edited A Magazine, the Belgian fashion title, they made it all Team America World Police-y. There's Chloë Sevigny with stars on her face, pencil drawings of Abe Lincoln, and a story about Marfa, Texas, inside. [NYTimes]
• Designer Kenzo Takada sold his art collection at auction for $2.6 million in Paris. [WWD]
• To the surprise of exactly nobody, retail apparel prices dropped again in May. In fact, the overall Consumer Price Index fell by its sharpest year-over-year amount since, well, January. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne announced it expected a bigger loss for this quarter than it had previously thought. Its share price tumbled 13%. [Reuters]
• Money-losing company Pacific Sunwear has chosen a new C.E.O., and it's former Vans chief executive Gary H. Schoenfeld. [LATimes]
• Eddie Bauer declared its long-anticipated bankruptcy yesterday. It's the company's third bankruptcy filing in its nearly 90-year history; it hopes to be sold and emerge as a going concern. [AP]
• Fellow recession-plagued retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, while not bankrupt, has announced the end of its pricier Ruehl brand. Ruehl's same-store sales were down 33% in the month of May. All 29 Ruehl shops will be shuttered by the end of this year. [WSJ]
• Macy's is recalling 33,000 hoodies that pose a choking hazard. The hooded sweatshirts, sold under the brand names Greendog and Epic Threads between July, 2008, and March of this year, should be returned to the store for a full refund. [UPI]
• Topshop is renting bicycles to New Yorkers for free at its SoHo store. The catch? It's only for the week starting June 20, and there are all of 30 bikes available. But still: Free bikes! [

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• Before digesting the latest round of layoffs, garment worker intimidation, stupidly expensive luxury crap, and magazine turmoil, say a hearty Good mornin' to David Beckham in his fancy new Armani underwear ad. Hello David. [People]

• Fans crowded Oxford St. in London to get a glimpse of Beckham. He was making a promotional appearance at Selfridges to unveil a billboard of the new ad. [Sky]
• Glenn O'Brien, who recently left the troubled Interview magazine, says he just couldn't take it anymore. "It's like a Greek tragedy. Like watching a company going insane, instead of a person," said the media veteran. He also admitted he's not even on speaking terms with his former editorial co-director, Fabien Baron. When Baron was fired five months ago, O'Brien took over his job. And now that O'Brien is gone, Baron is back in. Meanwhile, Brant Publications owes freelancers and photographers (including such names as Inez & Vinoodh) for work dating back to last August. [FWD]
• Unions say the economy is making conditions worse for garment workers worldwide. Workers face unfair dismissal, the threat of relocation, abuse, long hours, and even worse pay. In the countries with the largest apparel industries, like China and Bangladesh, workers do not have the right to unionize or strike for better conditions. Seventy-six trade unionists were killed around the world last year, and 49 of those were in Columbia. [WWD]
• Lauren Bush has a new "FEED" bag in aid of the UN's World Food Program. This one is hand-beaded over the course of a day and a half by women from a Kenyan school for the deaf. In exchange, $100 of the $195 purchase price goes to feed two Kenyan school children for a year. [WWD]
• In other expensive bag news, Takashi Murakami released an updated version of his 2003 Louis Vuitton ad. The little girl he animated back then is all grown up, and, get this, still loves Louis Vuitton! [Racked]
• For the 2009 Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards on Monday, host Tracey Ullman will wear: a dress by Claire McCardell, a dress by Donna Karan (whom she recently lampooned), and a dress by Doo-Ri Chung, who wrote her Parsons thesis on McCardell. And the ouroboros of fashion is complete. [WWD]
• Natalia Vodianova will be the guest designer for Lutz & Patmos' pre-Spring line. [WWD]
• Ben Sherman is discontinuing its children's line, because, said chairman J. Hicks Lanier, "In this environment, we didn't have the luxury of ‘fun and cute' without the financial reward." It's a cold, cold economic reality that separates a child from his stripy t-shirt and mini suspenders. Also gone will be the men's and women's footwear lines. [WWD]
• Remember how Sean John went online looking for regular guys to model in its fall campaign? They found two hot dudes, and bookended them around a male model anyway. [WWD]
• Some luxury companies are pulling out all the stops to reach that tiny slice of the population that can still afford their wares. Hermès, whose overall sales rose 3.2%, to $603 million, and whose leather goods division grew 21.7% in the first quarter of this year, is increasing its annual marketing budget by nearly 10%, but two thirds of that $141 million will not be spent on advertising. Instead, the brand is pushing marketing events that garner publicity and make its best customers feel special — like extra trunk shows and store opening parties. Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy says its putting more of its marketing budget online, which explains the online-only Marion Cotillard series of film clips for Dior. [Reuters]
• The above moves aside, most experts are not expecting the high-end retail market to make its recovery any time soon. May same-store sales were typically dismal across most stores — Saks Fifth Avenue was down 26.2%, Nordstrom fell 13.1% — and luxury spending is falling faster than other retail spending. Some analysts say a full recovery may not happen until 2012. [TS]
• The C.E.O. of Liz Claiborne said the words "the new normal." [Reuters]
• Frederick's of Hollywood isn't doing so well, either. Maybe offerings like this are part of the problem? [WWD]
• Gap is also investing in online retail — it's adding 50 labels to Piperlime. Fifty Old Navy stores across the country are also due for a redesign, presumably to make them less like dingy warehouses. Old Navy has seen an increase in custom because of the recession. Its same-store sales for the first quarter of this year were only down 3%, compared with 18% a year ago. Still a ways to go, then. [TS]
• The judge overseeing the Filene's Basement bankruptcy has ordered that the auction for the company be re-opened. An affiliate of Men's Wearhouse won the nine-hour auction, bidding $67 million for Filene's trading name, inventory, 17-20 stores, and an all-important super-cheap 15-year lease for its downtown Boston flagship — but two other bidders complained that the proceedings were "a sham" because Men's Wearhouse didn't follow court-ordered auction procedures. The judge agreed, and there is to be a new auction today. [BH]

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• Kanye West and Amber Rose hit up the American Apparel in NoHo for hoodies and sunglasses. "He was really nice about getting his photo taken for our blog," said the store manager. Doesn't he look it! [AmApp]

• Last week, Kanye apparently stood up Agyness Deyn. [Mirror]
• Uh oh. Tim Gunn's Tide commercials were truth-squadded by Consumer Reports, who found that not only was his claim that Tide Total Care doesn't fade clothes after 30 washes untrue, but that another Tide product, Tide 2x Ultra Coldwater, performed just as well as Total Care, for half the price. [CR]
• Stephen Colbert's camouflage suit: custom made by Brooks Brothers. [The Cut]
• Is Vera Wang really going to Dancing With The Stars? [E!]
• Recent Columbia grad Bee "fashion is a really weird industry" Shaffer, everybody: "Right now I am looking for a job, but I also want to study acting." Because if there's one industry where all the people are well-adjusted and normal, it's acting! [FWD]
• Stella McCartney has announced a new partnership to create one-off collections for Gap Kids and Baby Gap. It's the first time the designer has ever done children's wear, and the clothing will hit stores late this year. [WWD]
• Clairol's Nice 'n' Easy at-home hair color is apparently in for a big relaunch, with The Office's Angela Kinsey. In the year to March, Procter & Gamble already spent 97 million on Nice 'n' Easy ads, almost double what it spent on advertising for the brand in the whole of 2008. As for Kinsey, it sounds like she'll play a sort of underminey girlfriend who tells women things like, "Remember when your friend Kelly said she liked your hair color? She lied!" [AW]
• Well, somebody must still have money: Stefano Pilati's "New vintage" collection for Yves Saint Laurent is all but sold out after one day on Barneys' sales floor. [WWD]
• New Yorkers stuck for Father's Day gift ideas, take note: designer John Bartlett's first collection with Liz Claiborne will be sold for four days starting June 18th at a pop-up store at 143 Seventh Avenue South. Shorts will be $55, polos $39.50, and sport coats $89.50. We imagine there'll be some nice socks and hankies, too. [The Cut]
• Pieces from Yigal Azrouël's current Spring/Summer collection, along with Alternative Apparel t-shirts hand-screened with woodblock-esque prints by the designer, are currently for sale on eBay. The items are offered at fixed prices, and while they are below retail ($215 for a cardigan), they're not exactly sample-sale affordable. But all proceeds go to the Natural Resources Defense Council. [eBay]
• Fashion blind item: "Which design collaboration's not actually going so smoothly? Major licensing and financial problems mean the summer-turned-fall launch is now looking like late winter. And if that's not enough drama the designer now 'despises' the collaborator." We'd say famously difficult Jil Sander and Uniqlo fit the bill here, except that line was always supposed to launch this Fall. [Fashionista]
• Net-a-Porter increased its sales by 47.8% in the year to January 31, to a volume of £81.5 million. [FT]
• Versace has named a new chief executive after the hasty departure of Giancarlo di Risio following tensions with the Versace family: the new guy is Gian Giacomo Ferraris, who led Jil Sander since 2004 (the year Sander herself was finally forced out of her design position by owners Prada). [WSJ]
• Jewelry can be a notoriously unethical business — and we don't just mean blood diamonds. Conditions in gold mines are often unsafe for workers, the chemicals used in mining, such as cyanide, can wreak havoc on local ecosystems, and the trade in precious gems like rubies and emeralds is often under the control of third-world strongmen. "Most gems are found in the poor parts of the world and they end up on very rich people's fingers and it's complicated," says jeweler Stephen Webster. The industry is taking a variety of voluntary measures to change its ways. [Telegraph]
• Things are head-spinningly complicated at Interview magazine — still. Fabien Baron and Glenn O'Brien used to be co-editorial directors; then, five months ago, Baron was fired, and O'Brien retained his position while a new creative team was brought in by Brant publications. Now, as of Friday, O'Brien is out — and Baron is back in his old job. [WWD]
• Shares in Men's Wearhouse gained 16% to $20.70 in trading on Tuesday, after the announcement that an affiliate of the company would buy the bankrupt Filene's Basement discount department store chain. Despite same-store sales that fell 5%, Men's Wearhouse still posted a first-quarter profit, and expects earnings of 50 to 60 cents a share in the next quarter. [TS]
• But another bidder in the Filene's auctions says the Men's Wearhouse bid should be invalidated because the auction was "a sham." [Crain's]
• Eddie Bauer might declare its bankruptcy as soon as the end of this week. [WSJ]

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• Freida Pinto and Evangeline Lilly are new faces of L'Oreal. To mark the occasion, Lilly said she's proud "to represent a brand whose ambition is to...contribute to the fulfilment [sic] and well-being of everyone." [PRNewswire]

• After long construction delays, cash-strapped Roberto Cavalli has opened his $30 million designer night club in Dubai. The floors are black quartz, and Swarovski crystals dangle from the ceilings, for that pre-recession look. [WWD]
• Designer Hussein Chalayan, for his part, sees the future, and it looks like you wearing his ugly sneakers for Puma. [Dazed Digital]
• The pop star Estelle, who recently designed a handbag, now wants a shoe line. [WWD]
• Giles Deacon is expanding his business. A new manufacturing deal with Italy's Castor Srl will allow his label to reach more than 120 stores worldwide, compared with his current 38, and to do pre-season collections. [Elle UK]
• Pharrell Williams, and Takashi Murakami. Making art, together. [WWD]
• Sophie Dahl, who recently published her first cookbook, is rumored to be in talks to present a food show for the BBC. [Metro UK]
• The Elle Decor of cokey hipster creatives, The Selby, shot Julia Restoin-Roitfeld's New York apartment. Look only if you can stomach a designer shoe collection with a total sticker price in the tens of thousands before noon. [The Selby]
• Christian Siriano, who has made Heidi Klum some clothes to wear during her fourth pregnancy, demonstrates the way not to talk about a high-profile client after the fact: "I think she's trying to cover it a little this time. She's getting older and wants to be more sophisticated, not casual. She's trying to keep it a little quiet." Klum's trainer, David Kirsch, shows the proper deference and positivity: "Why should she do anything differently? She had a beautiful body all throughout her pregnancies. She's very disciplined and dialed in to being healthy." [People]
• Sessilee Lopez credits last July's all-black issue of Italian Vogue, which featured her on one of its four covers, with "resurrecting" her career. [The Cut]
• Topshop is on the hunt for more retail locations in Manhattan. [NY Observer]
• Competitor H&M is making its latest designer collaboration, with Brit Matthew Williamson, available in more of its stores than ever before. The Swedish chain has 1,700 stores worldwide, and Williamson's summer collection will be stocked in 1,600 of them when it launches this Thursday — compared with the 200 stores that previous collaborations with designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney had reached. [WSJ]
• The H&M line is also Williamson's first foray into men's wear — something he might continue under his own label, if the mass-market collection goes over well. [WWD]
• Rick Ross wore a pair of Louis Vuitton sunglasses on the May cover of XXL magazine — and promptly received a letter from the company informing him they were counterfeit. "Louis Vuitton did not grant permission to Mr. Ross or to whoever did make the sunglasses to use our trademarks," wrote a miffed company spokesperson. Ross says the glasses are real, but that he had an L.A. jeweler add 14 karat gold accents to them. Which befits a style named "The Millionaire." [WWD]
• Macy's, ever neighborly, expands its inventory whenever a competitor within its ambit fails, in order to lure the bankrupt chain's former customers. [WSJ]
• Nordstrom is being sued by a group of former employees who allege that the company stole their sales commissions. When an item is returned by a Nordstrom customer, the commission originally paid the salesperson is deducted from that worker's salary — but thanks to Nordstrom's lenient return policy, in practice this policy means that items bought, and commission accordingly paid, months earlier can suddenly be rescinded. Nordstrom settled a racial harassment lawsuit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $292,500 last month. [Fashionista]
• eBay has won the lawsuit brought against it by L'Oreal, meaning the auction giant has no legal responsibility for counterfeit products sold through its site. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne reported a loss of $91.4 million in the first quarter of this year. This was much steeper than analysts had expected, and the company's share price fell. [Reuters]
• If you want to fly like Superman, this leotard worn by Christopher Reeve — with reinforced slits for wires — might get you started. [Mirror]

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

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

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• Confirmed: Madonna will do the Louis Vuitton fall campaign. With Jesus Luz? I imagine LVMH execs did a pro/con weighing the headline value against the risk that Madge would dump her boytoy ere September. [Grazia]

• No pesky swine flu pandemic threat level five business will put the fear into superstylist/downtown savant/Socrates afficionado Pat Field. When asked if she was afraid of the illness, she replied, "No. We're in America and we don't give a shit about anything." [The Cut]
• Frenchie actress and hobbyist 9/11 conspiracy theorist Marion Cotillard, new face of Lady Dior, will, unsurprisingly, wear Dior to the Met ball on Monday. [WWD]
• Fashionologie has an excellent roundup of the Met ball news, from which designers are sitting this year out due to the cost, to who's taking whom as a date. [Fashionologie]
• Michelle Obama's March Vogue cover was a top-selling issue, moving 560,000 copies on the newsstand, which is 1,000 more than 2008's best-seller, the September issue. [WWD]
• Elle MacPherson designed a cashmere sweater for her sister-in-law's line, Banjo & Matilda. It costs $499 Australian. [British Vogue]
• Behnaz Sarafpour went to Saudi Arabia to show her line in a trunk show (organized by a princess and attended by women only, naturally) and the designer reports that it is totally an underrated holiday destination. "I even got to ride a camel for the first time!!! Very Lawrence of Arabia!!!" [WWD]
• The launch party for Matthew Williamson's H&M line doubled as a booze cruise. Only unlike your pre-recession enforced-jollity work do, his had Grace Jones performing. [Style.com]
• And a pants-less Chanel Iman. [The Cut]
• Sophie Dahl: "When you've got big bosoms and a really big bottom it's difficult to get dressed. You end up looking slightly pornographic in everything. But it's nice to be able to get into jeans and a T-shirt and not have your breasts do the talking." [Daily Express]
• V's take on a swimsuit issue looks like a winner. Six different models on the cover, including a sizzling Naomi Campbell, shot against a yellow background. Campbell marks her 25th year in the industry this year, so naturally, she's hinting about a retirement. That'll never stick. [Daily Mail]
• Francisco Costa is going to be on Martha Stewart's show tomorrow. [WWD]
• Kenneth Cole is going to be a commencement speaker at Northeastern University. Wanna take odds on 30 continuous minutes of puns? [FWD]
• A collection of Christian Lacroix's couture theater and opera costumes is being shown in Singapore — the first exhibition of the French designer's work outside France. Patsy would just die to be there. [Dazed Digital]
• Under Armour is recalling 211,000 athletic cups. Because they come from a batch that "can break if hit, posing a serious injury hazard to athletes." [BlackBook]
• An awful lot of Isaac Mizrahi's recently-released first collection for mass-market retailer Liz Claiborne has already been discounted, notes Racked. [Racked ]
• Hugo Boss's net profits shrank by 2% in the first quarter of 2009. [WWD]
• Men's Wearhouse just discovered its own long-existing Prom Rep program — a kind of Tupperware Party of tux rental, with "referrals" and "rewards" for customers willing to transform themselves into vectors of corporate marketing with a target lock on their friends — is perfect for the Twittered, Facebooked, atomized high school world of now. Isn't that nice. [BrandWeek]

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• "It's not up to him to give her lessons; Michelle Obama is of her time; Oscar de la Renta is no longer," scoffed designer Azzedine Alaïa. Ooh, breaking: Oscar is on the View now. [WWD]

• Chloe Sevigny might not do her Opening Ceremony line every season, because she's busy being on the TV. Still with the I-actually-design-this-crap pretense! [The Cut]
• As promised, The Daily Beast now features advertising! Read all about HOW BOTTEGA VENETA IS KEEPING LUXURY RELEVANT. (Presented by Bottega Veneta.) [Daily Beast]
• Isaac Mizrahi just made an announcement on The Today Show: Women, we need to be spending all our money on our hair! It's what's important in life. [Anna's Twitter]
• Ads for Matthew Williamson's collection for H&M, which goes on sale May 14, have leaked. Daria Werbowy prances, mantis-like, on a beautiful beach wearing acid bright paisleys. And a bikini I really want. They gave Werbowy the same rope of loosely braided fake hair that the current H&M collection models sport in their campaign, and which I assume is not even supposed to look real. [Nitro:Licious]
• Depending on the outcome of a lawsuit, Forever 21 may find itself no longer able to copy designers' offerings willy-nilly. Trovata, whose shirts the fast fashion chain shamelessly ripped off several seasons ago, has been suing the company since, and the case is finally set to go to trial. Which means a jury would decide if the "inspiration" (which extended to the placement and choice of buttons and other unique design features) was illegal. [WWD]
• The chief executives of faltering fashion companies continue to get raises! After Kay Krill at Ann Taylor and Glenn Murphy at the Gap each got hefty pay hikes, Jones Apparel Group has raised the compensation of its CEO, Wesley Card, by 38%, to $5.5 million, for 2008. That was the same year Jones Apparel Group lost $765 million. The company owns brands like Jones New York, Anne Klein, and Nine West, and its sales fell 6% last year. Its share price has dropped by over 60%. [Crain's]
• Experts estimate global sales of luxury goods will shrink by 10% in the coming year. [WSJ]
• Marc Jacobs opened a store for his slightly lower-priced Marc by Marc Jacobs line in London. [Independent]
• While women's apparel sales have been falling sharply, menswear is up 1%. Tom Ford says his stonkingly expensive eponymous men's line is doing just fine (although we can't imagine he's sold many $30,000 cufflinks lately). Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard — where Alexander McQueen once trained — say they've had 20 new clients in the past month, which is a significant increase for a small business. [FT]
• Splitting the difference this spring: pant suits, especially when the jackets are in that slouchy 80s boyfriend style. The Times does an apt enough job tracing the trend to its point of origin. [NY Times]
• Frida Giannini, the woman who's transformed Gucci's look (and who did groundwork for that blazer trend), says she's keen to start a Gucci cosmetics line. [Times of London]
• Oh, my. This latest ad for edgy lingerie company Agent Provocateur sure is very racy. I hope all the attention they get for it won't hurt their brand. [Independent]

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• This shoe is made by Christian Louboutin, out of python skin, leather, cobbler's glue, and, we assume, diamond-plated unicorn farts. Because what else could justify a $2,875 price tag? Happy recession! [The.Life.Files]

• Lindsay Lohan made the cover of Taiwan Harper's Bazaar, which a celebrity blogger initially misidentified as China Harper's Bazaar. An international incident unfolded in the comments. "Actually it is from Taiwan's Harper's Bazaar,not China……." wrote the user SAM. "Taiwan is a part of China," shot back someone called liangjuan. "Taiwan is independent as territory of the ROC, it is not part of the PRC," offered a stickler for details. "TAIWAN IS NOT PART OF CHINA!!!!! It is an independent country and it has NOTHING to do with China," said Taiwan Is My Life. Someone else pointed out the extensive use of Photoshop, and several users debated the invisibility of Lindsay's freckles, and downright Freudian levels of cocaine use. Someone called A split the difference: "photoshop does wonders ha. and taiwan and china are not the same." Then someone who reads Mandarin on The Fashion Spot pointed out the cover is from April 2008, not April 2009, and the seeming importance of all this faded. [JustJared]
• Charlotte Ronson threw a party for her J.C. Penney line, I Heart Ronson (which is pretty bad). This story doesn't mention how Lindsay Lohan was turned away at the door by security. Then she Twittered that Sam Ronson had broken her heart. [WWD]
• In response, Lindsay threw herself into her work. She's now designing pantyhose! Control-top pantyhose. [The Cut]
• People has the details of Gisele Bundchen's wedding gown. Presumably they shot this grainy telephoto image of a woman wearing an white dress before their photographers' window was shot out by a trigger-happy bodyguard? The dress and veil were John Galliano, custom, of course. Gisele's veil involved six feet of white silk tulle and hand-sewn lace, while her gown was bias-cut silk satin. [People]
• Veronica Webb might launch a jewelry line. "I would make accessories that would be the ultimate building blocks of women's wardrobes," she told New York last week at a Topshop opening party. "You know, things that they could interchange from season to season, and no matter what, they'd have the perfect little thing at their fingertip every time you need to get dressed in twenty minutes and leave the house — the belt that matters, the hoops that matter." Ah, yes. Accessories that matter. I've always craved those. Then she said Kate Moss was only as tall as her 6-year-old. [The Cut]
• Roberto Cavalli went ahead and extended his licensing deal with Itterre SpA, the bankrupted manufacturer whose subpar construction and late deliveries Cavalli alleged was the reason he had to cancel his fall Just Cavalli show at the last minute. At the time, Cavalli ranted — and cried — about Ittierre's actions to the international media, and Ittierre threatened to sue. Cavalli's new deal wipes away $26.5 million in royalties the designer claims Ittierre owes him. He must really want to sell that 20% stake in his company. [WWD]
• Alessandro Dell'Acqua has quit as creative director of Malo after less than a year in the position. IT Holdings SpA, the parent company of Ittierre, owns Malo and the label Gianfranco Ferré, which has been rudderless since the death of its founder last year. After Ittierre went bankrupt, IT Holdings was forced to announce its own bankruptcy. [WWD]
• Karen Elson, the British supermodel who married Jack White, moved to Nashville and opened a vintage store with a stylist friend. They look very happy. And well-dressed. [Blackbook]
• The CEO of the Gap, Glenn Murphy, took home $9.3 million last year. Despite his company's under-performance. [WWD]
• Christian Siriano would like everyone to know that CariDee English, formerly of that television show about weaves and feelings, is not his casting choice for his fall campaign. CariDee happened to do a test shoot recently with Brad Walsh, Siriano's photographer boyfriend, and for that shoot, Walsh styled CariDee in clothes from Siriano's main collection and shoes from his Payless line. Then, CariDee gave an interview to After Elton about how OMG she loves teh geighs SO MUCH!!! (and Fashion!), and somehow, the interviewer came away with the impression that the shoot was for Siriano's campaign. Which is not true. Christian loves CariDee, and he would do anything for her, but he won't do that. [The Cut]
• Yves Saint Laurent will offer a "new vintage" capsule collection starting next month at Barney's. The clothes will be made from fabrics from the label's archives. It's all part of a strategy to increase consumer spending on luxury items that doesn't involve sales — brands think they can do this by making their offerings seem more special and personal. [WWD]
• Beyoncé's $11,000 shopping spree at Patricia Field's store included the purchase of a hand-made mask. Pat has no idea what she'll use it for, either. [The Cut]
• There are three good stories at the end of this link: for one, Oscar de la Renta is still digging. On learning that the First Lady, who has yet to wear anything designed by him, had worked a few pieces by European designers into her wardrobe for her trip to, you know, Europe, he said, "Our industry right now is having a very difficult time. I think it would be great if the First Lady dressed in American styles. There are a lot of talented people here too." Which would sound less like a gloss on sour grapes coming from a guy who wasn't saying just last week that Mrs. Obama looked dowdy in that sweater she wore to meet the Queen. Secondly, Lord & Taylor is picking up Liz Claiborne again after five years. Because Isaac Mizrahi is the designer now, and L & T recognizes that kaleidoplaid is the way of the future. Thirdly, Stila is maybe bankrupt/for sale. Their website is down, and carries a warning that orders placed in late March might be canceled. [WWD]
• A good-looking 30-year-old San Francisco businessman, who happens to be a practicing Sikh, was spotted last year by the designer Kenneth Cole. Now he's working for GQ, which just proves that...hotness knows no religion? [Telegraph]

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• The good news: Runway is safe. The bad news: yup, it's on Lifetime. [AdAge]
• Britney Spears cuts a revealing figure in her new Candie's ad. Candie's: the last refuge of a scoundrel. [NYDN]

• In case your priorities are totally out of whack and you don't realize that holymotherofgod the biggest thing in The World is taking place as we speak, the TopShop flagship opens in NYC today. (Which will apparently make online easier for everyone!) Last night's opening gala featured Kate Moss as mistress of ceremonies, but according to the Daily Mail, J.Lo "upstaged" her. [Daily Mail]
• "Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen and Michelle Trachtenberg worked the rock chic look at the first of the two VIP previews, while British actress Emily Mortimer opted for an Eighties-inspired Topshop outfit and Michelle Monaghan sported a pair of bold shoulders." [VogueUK]
• Was la Moss's triple-Topshop change an homage to Michelle Obama? We're gonna go with, "no." [ElleUK]
• This was obviously the party to have attended, since apparently another Topshop do featured the spectacle of Jimmy Fallon singing Sting's "Englishman in New York." [Style.com]
• Sir Philip Green has proclaimed it the best Topshop evah! "Mirroring the Oxford Circus flagship in London, the four-level, 40,000-square-foot space, with 28,000 square feet for selling, is an eyeful of energetic, packed merchandising with about 2,000 stockkeeping units, a broad price range from moderate to bridge, and dozens of mannequins and forms, either dangling from the high, 30-foot ceilings or sitting atop the alcoves. It's a wide store with columns and escalators, huge colorful illustrations of London icons, and theatrically lit Topshop marquees. Above all, it's the product, and not so much the architecture or decor, that does the talking." [WWD]
• For those in the Apple: apparently the line is lunch-break bearable! [New York]
• "Catwalk exposé Picture Me, which allegedly dishes le dirt on Irina Lazareanu, Nicole Miller, ANTM fave Gilles Bensimon and others, premieres Monday. [New York Post]
• Gucci launched a new scent, Flora, at the Chateau Marmont. Obviously, Zanessa was there. [Style.com]
• Those foot-high boots sported by Heidi Klum in the German Vogue shoot will give us nightmares. [Just Jared]
• Speaking of fashion photography! Zac Posen makes his print ad debut. Quoth the aging wunderkind, "Once Ellen (von Unwerth) saw me singing Cole Porter, laying on top of Lorraine's grand piano, she decided it had to be the spot for the picture." Indeed. [Fabsugar]
• Taylor Momsen is letting life imitate art. Which is unfortunate, because she's on Gossip Girl. Says the 15-year-old of her gig as frontwoman for "Pretty Reckless," "I'm actually designing all of my costumes. It's a rock band, so there's not costume changes but there's definitely a look." [People]
• Michelle Obama wears J.Crew in London. Make of this what you will. [E]
• In almost-as-breaking news: Madonna has been spotted sporting a fanny pack in Malawi. [NY Daily News]
• So why isn't Isaac Mizrahi making those budget basics everyone's droning on about? "People have their basics...I want what I can't resist." [NYT]
• GQ names Mark Ronson the "best-dressed man of 2009." We're gonna go ahead and color this "controversial." [GQ]
• Another rumor/confirmation of Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone's marriage. The tipster in Brazil claims he saw them "taking after-ceremony pictures with a small group of what looked like just relatives and close friends!" I guess now that the bloom is off the Beyonce-Jay-Z mystery, we need another source of suspense. [Update: this was an April Fool's! I was totally, um, fooled. -SS] [Fashionista]
• German retail sales are down. [WSJ]
• But Marks and Spencer's...aren't as bad as everyone expected! [WSJ]
• The retail version of the Carrie Bradshaw wedding gown in which she gets jilted has sold out of Vivienne Westwood "almost instantly." [Sassybella]

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• Geithner's proposed new regulatory framework buoyed retail stocks by 4.4% yesterday. Saks' shares rose 15%, Ann Taylor was up 18%, Macy's climbed 10.2%, and Liz Claiborne rose 16.2%. Finally, some good fashion economic news! [WWD]

• But it isn't all rosy on the business side. H&M's profits have fallen for the first time in five years. Their first-quarter net profit was down by 12%, which was worse than analysts had expected. [WSJ]
• Marc Ecko Enterprises owes business partners $170 million. $100 million of that is due to Li & Fung, the global sourcing giants, who announced just yesterday that their net was down 21%. [NY Post]
• Hugo Boss lost $20.6 million in the fourth quarter of 08. That's a decline in net of 27%. for the year. [WWD]
• Thom Browne, whom the New York Post reported was close to bankruptcy yesterday, denies the charge in WWD. The men's wear designer says he is looking for a financial backer to grow his company — but has been slow in his search because the relationship is a crucial one and he doesn't want to sell a majority stake in his business. [WWD]
• The Telegraph takes a tour of the Chanel handbag factory outside Paris, and finds 340 people working very slowly and carefully to complete the 180 steps in the making of a 2.55 purse. [Telegraph]
• Simply Vera by Vera Wang's spring line is out at Kohl's. I agree with this reviewer that it looks basically cute — but one word of advice? Do not ever imitate a runway or lookbook outfit head-to-toe. It's snoozeville. [Fabsugar]
• Last winter, Peacock Holdings LLC — a men's shirt concern, apparently — bought the Bill Blass brand from NexCen, the company which fired Peter Som and 60 Bill Blass employees without severance. At the time, Peacock said it planned to revive the ready-to-wear division within the year; they are just now looking for a creative director. [WWD]
• Kérastase is discontinuing ten products, including their Bain Après-Soleil shampoo. You can mourn them by buying the last little pottles of goodness at 30% off online with the code VIP30. [Kérastase Paris]
• Jane Whitfield, a designer at Louis Vuitton who shares the distinction, with fellow Briton Peter Copping, of being commonly described as "Marc Jacobs Right-Hand [Pronoun]" (or who perhaps doesn't have to share it anymore, following Copping's departure to Nina Ricci), lives in a charming centuries-old cottage near Versailles with her husband and kids. This story is entirely about her apparent knack for interiors and contains no other insight into her design work or experience. [Telegraph]
• In China, Clinique and Sony banded together to create a 40-episode web series that just happens to feature an awful lot of Clinique and Sony products. [WSJ]
• If you want to buy a punk outfit from Bergdorf, it will cost you $3000. [Blogue]

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• Thierry Mugler meets Sasha Fierce: a match made in shoulderpad superhero sparkle heaven. Mugler says he was exploring "The duality between being a woman and a warrior." [WWD]

• Working in the same vein, or perhaps just remembering last year's Met Ball, Marvel comics is planning a major move into women's apparel, jewelry, and cosmetics in 2009. Since what Marvel owns are characters — more than 5,000 in total — the design options are almost limitless. This deal could be great news for women who already feel like part-time superheroes; unfortunately, the t-shirt illustrating this story has an image of the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, the Flash, and Thor playing in a band, with the slogan "I Heart Boys That Rock!" Weaksauce, Marvel. [WWD]
• Lauren Bush's clothing line, which is sold under her middle name, Lauren Pierce, hits Barneys today. The line is mostly day and cocktail dresses and pretty skirts — with a few reversible capes thrown in for good measure — but with a twist: the classic, vaguely preppy silhouettes are constructed out of eco-friendly fabrics hand-dyed by women with a sustainable business plan in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ten per cent of profits from the line go to charities in the source country. [VF]
• Ladies of a certain age, rejoice: Teri Agins says it's A-okay for you all to be wearing animal print. In fact, the suggestions she has are exactly the same for women of all ages — go for small-scale prints, buy garments with classic lines, and wear only one or two printed items at a time. [WSJ]
• It's campaign season, and the rumors are a-swirlin'. YSL is said to be choosing Christy Turlington for its fall ads, Balenciaga has opted for a group of celebrities, shot by Stephen Meisel, and word is Calvin Klein is using Monika "Jac" Jagaciak, one of the brand's exclusives from the fall show. All scuttlebutt, of course, so make allowances for salt, etc. [Fashionologie]
• Hong Kong-based sourcing behemoth Li & Fung (who recently paid Liz Claiborne $83 million for a long term exclusive sourcing agreement) says its net income has fallen 21%. [WWD]
• Widely influential men's wear designer Thom Browne's namesake line is said to be facing bankruptcy. Browne has been looking for a financial backer for over a year, despite his lucrative sideline deals with Brooks Brothers Black Fleece — which runs through 2011 — and Harry Winston and Moncler. [NY Post]
• Swarovski is cutting an additional 600 production jobs at its Austrian headquarters. The move follows 700 layoffs last year, and another round of 500 job cuts is being pondered. [WWD]
• J. Crew, following a fourth quarter loss of $13.5 million, is trying to adjust to recession-altered patterns of consumer spending. Accordingly, it will continue the expansion of its lower-priced Madewell line. There are presently 12 Madewell stores, and the company plans to open eight more in 2009. [Mediapost via Teenfashionista]
• Which is funny, because Fergie has the same idea. She's coming out with not one but two lines of footwear. "Fergie" will sell for $89-129, and "Fergalicious" will be $39-69. Which still frankly seems like a lot to pay to look like a pop star's feet. [NY Post]
• Gwyneth Paltrow will be "designing" a range for the French label ZOETees this fall. I wonder if they'll let her do $400 cashmere socks? [Sassybella]
• One good deal in any economy: free shit! Topshop, which is promising cross its fingers hope to die that the store at Broadway and Broome St. will finally open this April 2nd, has a van circling downtown New York as a promotional stunt. Which would be crass and silly and unworthy of coverage if it weren't for the fact that Topshop's clothes are generally amazing. The van is giving away goodie bags and gift cards of varying amounts, and you can follow it online. [Topshop]

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