• Victoria Beckham opens up to Women's Wear Daily about everything from the childhood bullying she endured to why she couldn't bring herself to tell Marc Jacobs she was starting a fashion line. Clearly, someone wants to be Taken Seriously:

• And Beckham sure is a busy woman these days. Not only is she judging American Idol next month, bu she recently redesigned her denim and sunglass lines, after taking them in-house (the innovations she came up with include square rivets). And she chaperones school field trips in her (limited, we imagine) spare time. When she moved into fashion, people were derisive — surely she was just another celebrity cashing in on the brand of her self. But perhaps we got it wrong? "There have been people that have wanted to knock me that haven't been able to because they haven't been able to argue with the quality or the sell-throughs," says the star, who moves about $7.5 million worth of products a year. "I've always been driven. I was mentally and physically bullied when I was at school and that gave me a very thick skin.…The only reason for me bringing that up is I have always been a fighter." [WWD]
• Yet somehow we're still happier for this Bronx priest, Father Andrew O'Connor, whose sustainable cotton clothing line was worn by Cameron Diaz in Vogue and is now selling extremely well. A chance encounter set the wheels in motion: "I was helping a young woman and her fiancé prepare for their marriage," explains Father O'Connor, "and she said I'm an editor at Vogue; I'd really like to see your clothing line." In the resultant issue, Anna Wintour herself wrote in her Editor's letter, "the neat pair of checked shorts from the charitably minded fashion company Goods of Conscience [is] my personal favorite." The profits from the line fund domestic violence initiatives in the Bronx, and support the native Guatemalan communities where the fabric is woven. [NYDN]
• Matt Tyrnauer tells the long, horrifying, funny, and strange story of making and distributing a documentary film about a subject who could be — a little difficult. And Tyrnauer financed the film by taking out credit cards with 0% introductory APRs. Whenever Giancarlo Giammetti inquired about the production's cashflow, Tyrnauer would reply, "It's fully financed by a bank called Capital One." Valentino: The Last Emperor is now shortlisted for a Best Documentary Oscar. [TDB]
• Two men were found guilty of stealing more than £4 million worth of Cartier jewelry from an airport warehouse in 2001. They had apparently gotten away with it, but were found out when their third accomplice, a contestant on a reality TV series about cooking made by Jamie Oliver, contacted police to confess the crime last year. [BBC]
• Tune in tomorrow to watch Tom Ford on the Martha Stewart Show. Then on Thursday, Roberto Cavalli takes his mark at Martha's kitchen island. [Glamchic]
• Louis Vuitton's spring campaign does in fact feature Lara Stone, the company has confirmed. The Dutch model was shot in a pastoral studio set with white doves and handbags nestled into moss by Steven Meisel. [WWD]
• The February release of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland will be heralded in Paris by a display of one-off Alice-inspired dresses by designers Ann Demeulemeester, Christopher Kane, Alexander McQueen, and Martin Margiela (or at least whoever it is who designs under Martin Margiela's name these days) at the Printemps department store. [Elle UK]
• Daphne Guinness has officially moved from being Steven Klein's unpaid muse to his paid one. The heiress is featured in the spring Akris campaign. [WWD]
• Coach has filed more than 100 lawsuits against retailers it suspects of selling counterfeit Coach goods in 2009, including several lawsuits in Texas. Even though selling counterfeited goods is a criminal offense, the lawsuits are civil, because the fashion company wants the court to file injunctions against the offending retailers. One manager of a Fort Worth store named in the suit says, "I didn't know it was wrong." [DN]
• Barneys is looking to open its first Brooklyn Barneys Co-Op, most likely in Cobble Hill. [Crains]
• And in other retail news, the Chelsea Filene's Basement on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 18th Street will close this March, after the company was unable to renegotiate the terms of its lease. Seventy-five employees will be affected; the company could not say whether or not the workers would be transferred to Filene's other New York stores. It is looking for a new location nearby. [Crains]

Lacroix's owners, Florida-based Falic Group, bought the foundering house from the LVMH conglomerate in 2005, near the height of both the real estate bubble and the luxury goods boom that easy credit helped fuel. Despite the fact that Falic was best known for its duty free retail chain, it set about an ambitious company restructuring, and opened two new U.S. stores.

Lacroix made certain gestures toward becoming the kind of brand that produced profitable marginalia like sunglasses and perfumes — two scents were eventually produced under license by Avon, and Christian Lacroix did a designer water collaboration with Evian in 2007 — but fundamentally never became the kind of luxury brand that could turn its couture business into a loss-leader. Unlike Balenciaga and Gucci, two other houses revived by the combination of skillful collections, and then astronomical sales of handbags, sunglasses, and watches, Christian Lacroix never quite crossed over. The company restructuring and expansion was completed just as the retail economy as we knew it imploded; there can hardly have been a worse time to be in the business of selling $20,000 dresses than last fall.

Thus the bankruptcy filing this May. Thus the angry interviews. Thus the somber but masterful couture show in July. Though during the bankruptcy court process various companies expressed interest in buying the brand — two seriously, an Emirate sheikh who talked about licensing Christian Lacroix private yachts and Christian Lacroix luxury hotels, and France's Bernard Krief Consulting — neither could produce financial guarantees for the court. So the judge ruled that the Falic Group's plan to deal with the bankruptcy would be approved.

What is the Falic Group's plan? It involves the closure of both the couture and ready-to-wear clothing lines, the firing of nearly all the company's 120 workers, and the brand's continuation only as a name to be licensed.

The brand is not being liquidated, chief executive Nicolas Topiol is keen to point out. This leaves open the possibility that another party might buy the company and revive it as a clothing line — depending on the creative team in charge, and Christian Lacroix's involvement, potentially a good option. Of course, it also leaves open the possibility that the Falic Group might license out the Christian Lacroix name to other clothing manufacturers who have nothing to do with the famed designer from Arles: it's not hard to imagine Christian Lacroix denim, Christian Lacroix lingerie, Christian Lacroix sportswear. The company executives could decide to enter Pierre Cardin territory.

It's not known at this time whether or not Christian Lacroix — who has been working unpaid for over a year now — is intended to be among the 15-20 employees the Falic Group might keep on staff to run the licensing operation, or indeed whether or not Lacroix would want to continue his involvement with the company. But there is nothing to stop him designing for another fashion house, so long as it doesn't trade under the Christian Lacroix trademark. There's a small but tenacious number of designers who continued working in fashion after being dumped from the namesake labels they had founded: Jil Sander, who had the distinction of being fired from her company not once but twice after Prada bought a controlling share of the business, being one. (Sander eventually took on a creative director role at Uniqlo, and does a line of clothing, +J, with the Japanese retailer.) It's far from outside the realm of possibility that Christian Lacroix the person might continue on in fashion, even if Christian Lacroix the brand does not, or does so only under the limited terms of licensing agreements.

It's ironic that Lacroix, one of the designers most identified with the 1980s — at least, the 1980s of pouf skirts (which he famously invented), mixes of bright colors, and graphic prints, if not the 1980s of Armani greige — should experience a business failure just as fashion tastes were flirting hard with the decade of excess. (The Fashion Spot users started a thread tracking Lacroix's influence on contemporary designers, and spied convincing Lacroix-a-likes in the collections of Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Dolce and Gabbana, and Erdem.) Given he went 22 years without a profit, it might seem hard to argue Lacroix deserves a second chance. But to lose his talent from fashion entirely would be a terrible shame.

Image of Nadja Auermann in a Lacroix dress from Richard Avedon's 1995 editorial "In Memory Of The Late Mr. And Mrs. Comfort", via Paranaiv

End Of A Fairytale: Christian Lacroix Fashion House To Strip Down [Guardian]
A Misfit In The Couture Business [WSJ]

• 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]

• Alicia Keys has a jewelry line; her bangles and rings come engraved with the words of the Japanese pseudoscientist Masaru Emoto. You can't make this up. [WWD]
• Marie Claire has published some clear pictures of Rodarte's line for Target. [Nitrolicious]

• John Galliano's Christmas tree design for Claridge's is extraordinary and very weird. [Vogue UK]
• Madonna has rebounded from Louis Vuitton's decision not to re-hire her for a third season of ad campaigns rather well: she shot the spring Dolce & Gabbana campaign with Steven Klein in a Brooklyn studio on Friday. [WWD]
• Zac Posen has eliminated his public relations officer because of budget constraints. [WWD]
• Jamba Juice is getting into the rag trade. The maker of delicious smoothies thinks it can whip up "Jamba-inspired" t-shirts, sweatshirts, and headwear that everyone will want. No delivery date for the first collection was given. [BrandWeek]
• Express is suing Forever 21 for copyright violations concerning several plaid patterns, in what has to be the endgame for fashion originality. [WWD]
• Scarlett Johanson is apparently still doing ad campaigns for Mango. [FWD]
• Diane Von Furstenberg dropped a few dresses off with Ikram Goldman during a recent trip to Chicago. We all know what that means! [WWD]
• Thakoon Panichgul is now the creative director of the Japanese jewelry brand Tasaki. [Style.com]
• Tom Ford's profile in the Advocate is alternately touching, perhaps too revealing, and kind of crass — kind of like the man's designs. He opens up about his depression, his struggles with alcohol dependency, admits to chasing youth with Botox and Restylane, and how he once shaved his eyebrow off when he was on mescaline, but most fascinatingly of all, to our ears, is the revelation that in his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, he gave the main character a last name after his first boyfriend, Ian Falconer. Oh! Also there's this: "Yves and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery. I'd lived in France off and on and had always loved it. I went to college in France. It wasn't until I started working in France that I began to dislike it. They would call the fiscal police, and they would show up at our offices…They'd come marching in, and you had to let them in and they'd interview my secretary. And they can fine you and shut you down. Pierre was the one calling them. I've never talked about this on the record before, but it was an awful time for me. Pierre and Yves were just evil. So Yves Saint Laurent doesn't exist for me…I have letters from Yves Saint Laurent that are so mean you cannot even believe such vitriol is possible." [Advocate]
• Says Vogue/CDFA Fashion Fund finalist Flora Gill, of Ohne Titel: "My parents were always very supportive. They actually bought me books about Comme des Garçons when I was 8 years old, which I think is not…usual." Meet the other nine finalists in this video. [Style.com]
• Simon Fuller, who already holds a 51% stake in London's Storm Models, is rumored to be investigating setting up a New York agency. Posh is supposedly involved. This sounds awfully similar to the Simon-Fuller-and-Kate-Moss-are-going-to-found-an-agency rumor of a few months back. [Daily Mail]
• The woman who runs British lingerie brand Ultimo (current face: Peaches Geldof) noticed her 10-year-old daughter talking about going on a diet. So she has decided to ban excessive Photoshopping in Ultimo's advertising images. (Whether she'll ban the company from employing women like Peaches Geldof as role models is unanswered.) [Sun]
• Friday, Lady Gaga tweeted that she was visiting Nick Knight's Showstudio. The singer is apparently working with the fashion photographer/videographer on a video for her upcoming tour. The concept apparently involves "a veritable menagerie of animals." [Showstudio]
• Style.com ranked 2009's top fashion partiers; all the usual suspects — Olivier Zahm, Alex Wang, Lauren Santo-Domingo, Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, Leigh Lezark, Derek Blasberg, and Karl Lagerfeld — make the cut. But more importantly: can we never, ever refer to the Meatpacking District as "MePa" again? [Style.com]
• Cacharel, relaunched this October under Belgian designer Cedric Charlier, is returning to worldwide distribution in the spring. [WWD]
• And, just like that, it's over: Versace face, British Vogue cover model, Rimmel campaign-nabber Georgia May Jagger says she's quitting the biz. At least for the rest of the year: she's 17, so she has school, you know. [Vogue UK]
• Luella is closing. [Vogue UK]
• Former Gucci creative director Dawn Mello was allegedly run down by a bicycle messenger outside Bergdorf's. She has a shattered femur. [P6]

• Here are leaked pictures of Lindsay Lohan's spring campaign for 6126. The images were shot by reality-TV-star photographers Markus Klinko and Indrani. [Gone Hollywood]

• That was quick: Steve Madden has finalized a deal with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to manufacture shoes and accessories for the pair's new Olsenboye JC Penney's brand. [Crains]
• Francesca Versace, the niece of Donatella and daughter of Santo, was rejected the first time she applied to Central St. Martins. "I went to the London College of Fashion and did business and pattern cutting, which I hated, but reapplied for Saint Martins and finally got in. The first year, I was crying all the time. All the teachers gave me such a hard time." The designer says that, eventually, she started to fit in. "I did three years and I loved it. I had so much fun by the end." Now she lives in London and is best friends with Silvio Berlusconi's daughter. [Times UK]
• The December cover of Harper's Bazaar is rumored to feature Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. [WWD]
• Sometimes the Daily Mail online headline writers are evil geniuses. "Can Chanel Really Gild This Lily Or Are They Allen A Laugh?" would be one of those times. [Daily Mail]
• Project Runway alum Jeffrey Sebelia is taking his poor-man's-Santino aesthetic to his latest position, as creative director of the casual wear label Fluxus. [WWD]
• The M.A.C.-sponsored fashion shows at Milk Studios will continue at least for the next two years, says Estee Lauder Group president John Demsey. [The Cut]
• Scott Schuman's project for Burberry involved him shooting 100 trench coats, reveals Garance Doré. Included in the post is one of the pictures, of Doré wearing a short navy trench with a Yankees cap. [Garance Doré]
• The Gucci family biopic that Ridley Scott is making has Gucci family members upset. The story he's dramatizing — the intrafamily struggle for control that cost the life of eventual winner Maurizio Gucci, who was killed on his wife's orders just after hiring young designer Tom Ford — does not, they feel, redound to their benefit. "Enough mud," says Patrizia Gucci, Maurizio's cousin. "We have been through horrible things and paid plenty in person. I will write a book about the Guccis to say who they really are. And I will give Scott a copy, in hopes that his movie will never be released." Angelina Jolie is purportedly in talks to play Maurizio's wife. [Variety]
• And with the opening of Mongolia's first Louis Vuitton store, late last month, comes the inevitable trend story about how Ulaan Bator is, like, so hot right now (move over, Paris!). Actually, the warmest praise the capital garners from Louis Vuitton C.E.O. Yves Carcelle is that it is equivalent to "a good-sized provincial town in China." [News.com.au]
• Prada had just nailed down an agreement with its garment workers' union to furlough 250 out of 3,000 workers at its factory for four to six weeks when it announced that the rotating suspensions will only last three weeks. Spring orders outstripped the company's expectations by 10%. [Reuters]
• Gabriel Aubry, the male model who fathered Halle Berry's child, will be the spring face of Louis Vuitton men's wear. [Sassybella]
• Marc Jacobs might do a reality show. "I have very specific ideas about a show and how I'd want it to go, and I'd want it to be really different than the other ones," says the designer. But, "I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think so, unless we came up with the right thing, the right way." He hasn't been in touch with Bravo, who a few weeks back said it was "desperate" to have Jacobs in a show. We'd recommend re-watching Loïc Prigent's Louis Vuitton doc if you're feeling anxious. [The Cut]
• Alexander "I make $390 Italian yarn bike shorts" Wang, on his successful Barneys trunk show last week: "When I got to Barneys, I was welcomed with the news that our Rocco bag had a waiting list of 400-plus. By day's end, their entire Spring 2010 handbag order sold out with pre-buys — and that's before it will even hit the floor. Yikes! Good news, but now we're going to have to figure out how to produce more bags so our section won't be empty come January." A 400-plus person waiting list? Are the bags made of gold? Is it magically charmed so that whatever you wish for, you reach in and, pouf, there it is? Does it buy you drinks after a long day? Because we're struggling to understand what it is that's attractive about a black leather bag with studs on the bottom that costs nearly a grand. [Style.com]

• Stella McCartney's collection for GapKids is pretty damn adorable. [KanyeUniverseCity]

• Prince Charles toured the new Burberry headquarters yesterday. Designer Christopher Bailey and C.E.O. Angela Ahrendts showed him the 160,000 square foot building, and gave him a peek at the unreleased Burberry social-networking venture. [WWD]
• J. Crew creative director Jenna Lyons, whose salary is $1.9 million annually, received a hefty $1 million bonus this week — with strings attached. If she leaves the company within two years, she must repay it, and if she leaves during the following two years, she has to repay half. J. Crew has been cutting costs aggressively since the economic downturn began; in February, it instituted a wage freeze, fired 95 employees, and ceased matching 401(k) contributions. [WSJ]
• Kiwi model Rachel Hunter recommends see-to-be-seen spot The Standard Grill for dining in New York. She also recommends closing the curtains, should you rent a room at the hotel. [TDB]
• Demi Moore is a big supporter of designer Prabal Gurung. After she wore one of his dresses, his Twitter followship jumped from 50 to over 1,000. Why this story merits the tabloid header "Should Ashton Be Jealous of Prabal?" is inexplicable. [Style.com]
• Lara Stone may have missed out on the next Chanel campaign, but being the spring face of Louis Vuitton must be some consolation. Hopefully the brand won't Photoshop her into a waxy, corpselike likeness, à la Madonna fall 2009. [WWD]
• Sexy designer Yigal Azrouël is running the New York Marathon this weekend. Joining him — and nearly 40,000 other people — will be supermodel Veronica Webb. Model Anne Vyalitsyna has volunteered to guide a disabled runner along the course. [The Cut]
• There are paparazzi shots of Georgia May Jagger on the Leicester Square set of her new Rimmel ad. Yeah, she has her dad's mouth. [Daily Mail]
• Christian Dior, Chanel, and dozens of other French labels are collaborating on a Chinese website that will feature lavish, 3-D photographs of their products. And then not allow anyone to buy them online. Sounds like a counterfeiters' cookbook if ever we heard of one. [AP]
• Kenneth Cole cracked puns shared his sobering thoughts with students at FIT on Wednesday: "People say that things will get better in a few months, but to be honest, I don't think it will get better for years. The key is to go out in the world with a sense of contest....Find out where you can offer value as a designer and create something that people will desire." [WWD]
• Then at FIT on Thursday, fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo took to the stage to talk about his new Penguin Classics cover designs. And his day job. Toledo says despite having his work featured in a plethora of international editions of Vogue, he hasn't cracked American Vogue because "they're a bit too safe." [The Fashion Informer]
• Alexander Wang's fall collection includes $395 bike shorts. He defends them thusly: "People look at that and go 'Oh, those are biker shorts.' But the yarn we use is from Italy, the technique is digital weaving, there's a lot that goes into product development that the consumer doesn't necessarily always understand. And for the people that do understand it, they do get into it, they buy it, and those are the people I'm speaking to. And there will always be people that don't understand what you're doing, but I'm not here to satisfy everyone." Do you get that? Those are the people he's speaking to. He's selling $395 bike shorts to the $395 bike short-people. And only them. The rest of you peons can buy your non-Italian yarn, loomed bike shorts at Target. [The Cut]
• You could buy two styles from Tory Burch's new sunglass range for less than the cost of Wang's shorts. (And they're still overpriced!) Though there's one pair of folding aviators that's kinda nifty. [Style.com]
• Crystal Renn is in the latest campaign for Evans, the UK plus-size high street store. And she looks great. [Daily Mail]
• Pics are out of Nicole Richie's footwear for her House of Harlow brand. The shoes, which will go on sale in the spring, feature some Navajo-inspired embroidery. Sounds like Richie's been taking a leaf from the Navajo-Pocahontas-at-the-disco stylings of Kelly Bensimon. [FabSugar]
• Christian Siriano "designed" a Starbucks gift card for the holidays. It differs from the regular gift cards thus: it is smaller (which is noticeable) and "chic-er" (not really noticeable). [FWD]
• "There's nothing more American than a pair of blue jeans," says a worker at one of the last remaining denim mills in the U.S. Actually, blue jeans are a French product — serge de Nîmes dyed with indigo imported via Genoa, or bleu de Gênes — that was reinvented in the American West by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. But close enough! Boo to those Mexicans who are now making our products! [CNN]
• Michael Kors is doing a makeup collection for Estee Lauder. It'll go on sale in January, and it's named Very Hollywood, to match Estee Lauder's recently launched Very Hollywood perfume. [WWD]
• Estee Lauder's profits for the quarter ended in September rose to $140.7 million dollars. Last year during the same period, the company made a paltry $51.1 million. [AP]

• Of course a Nicole Richie clothing line was inevitable. It's called Winter Kate, and it will be hitting stores next February. [WWD]
• The full Jimmy Choo for H&M lookbook is out. [Daily Mail]

• Nick Knight is apparently shooting Raquel Zimmerman for the spring Alexander McQueen campaign. [Fashionologie]
• At the Oprah Store in Chicago, you can buy items worn by Oprah Herself on the show, from Oprah's Closet. But don't dare try them on! The rule is "To preserve the integrity of the items and ensure that Oprah was the last person to wear them," says a clerk. [True/Slant]
• Dennis Hopper has done an Easy Rider-inspired sneaker — whatever that means; it's navy suede — for Hogan. [WWD]
• "It's really belittling of the customer to think that anyone from a different price bracket deserves anything less," says Stella McCartney, who has collaborated on lower-priced lines so far with H&M, Adidas, Le Sportsac, and now GapKids. [NYTimes]
• Isaac Mizrahi decided to open his first store in the middle of a recession because a psychic told him to. [Fashionista]
• Mizrahi also told audiences at the 92nd St. Y, "I've actually booked girls [for a fashion show] that weren't obese, they were real girls. Like gorgeous anatomy. And one was a stripper. And you could feel the energy in the room just go down. Closed the books. Pens went down. They were angry. I could feel the anger. And I never did it again, because I thought Why bother? It takes a lot to rile women. It takes like actual breasts. Someone with implants, they're fine. Yes, you're right. Fashion advertisements are hateful. Hateful. Yeah, but they wouldn't do it unless it worked, right? It works." [The Cut]
• Yvon Chouinard, 70, is the founder of Patagonia. And as you would expect, he's outdoorsy. "I used to spend 250 days a year sleeping on the ground. I've climbed on every continent. I'm old enough to have seen the destruction," he says. "The reason I am in business is I want to protect what I love." And it seems like corporate responsibility has been Chouinard's practice since long before it became a buzzword; Patagonia has donated 1% of its annual sales to grass-roots environmental causes since 1985, and it switched to only using organic cotton in 1995. It has persuaded Nike, Timberland, and Wal-Mart to switch, too. [USN]
• Meanwhile, Lily Cole is working with a group called the Sky Rainforest Rescue campaign, which is working to save a 3 million hectare area of rainforest in the state of Acre, Brazil. [Independent]
• Levi's apparently thinks corporate responsibility comprises adding an extra message to its garment care tags, asking customers to please consider donating the jeans to charity when they are no longer needed, oh yeah, and to care for our planet. [AW]
• A man named Daniel Storto makes gloves in a rust belt New York town called Gloversville. That's the best we can describe this story, which, though a tad long on the gosh-darnit quirky local color, you should totally read. [NYTimes]
• Why would anyone make a $650 necklace, take the care to plate it in gold, and then adorn it with fake pearls? Questions that should be put to some outfit that sells at Barneys called Mawi. [W]
• The save the garment district rally yesterday featured this grand promise from mayoral candidate Bill Thompson: "As mayor, I'll work with manufacturers, the fashion industry and labor unions to arrange for up to one million square feet of dedicated garment manufacturing space in nonprofit buildings." Meanwhile, one manufacturer wants tax cuts for companies that manufacture domestically, interest-free loans, vouchers for his rent, tariffs on imported garments, and a blow job from Anna Wintour. (All right, we made that last part up.) Enforcing existing zoning laws would probably work just as well. [Crain's]
• Judith Leiber once designed a bag for Hillary Clinton based on Socks the Cat. [Style.com]
• Louis Vuitton now has a store in Ulan Bator. That's in Mongolia. The country, or at least certain sectors of it, is awash in wealth from uranium and copper mining, and officials at LVMH are assured that "elegant women" are already sporting damier and monogram canvas items at Ulan Bator's "trendy nightclubs and restaurants." Louis Vuitton is not, however, the first luxury brand to hit the market: Ermenegildo Zegna opened last month. [WWD]
• Roberto Cavalli, after having visited Chechnya, will now take care of fashion business in Turkey. [FWD]
• Cynthia Rowley is doing a line of surfwear for Roxy. We want to see those alleged neoprene pencil skirts. [Racked]
• J. Crew nearly doubled its earnings forecast for the fourth quarter, and its stock rose by 10%, to $42.01. [TS]
• Sir Philip Green's Arcadia Group — which owns Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, and Burton — reported a 13% rise in pre-tax profits, to £213.6 million, for the year to this August. [Independent]

• Victoria Beckham is out at Armani, and Megan Fox is in. The actress has just been photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott for next January's Emporio Armani underwear and Armani Jeans campaigns. [WWD]

• Amber Valletta has a clothing line, and Saks Fifth Avenue will donate $250,000 to breast cancer research from goods it sells from this Thursday through Sunday, whether you shop there or not. [USAToday]
• Betsey Johnson — who has talked openly of wanting a diffusion line, perhaps with Target or H&M, in the past — might get her wish. She told the National Arts Club last night that she was in talks to do a line with QVC or HSN. [The Cut]
• Women's Wear Daily tries cheekily to make the point, through historic quotes and photos, that Emanuel Ungaro, the couturier, and Lindsay Lohan, the fake tan executive who now runs his label, share an aesthetic. But, seriously, he's the guy who said "Shock for its own sake doesn't interest me," and, "A maison de couture is not a circus." [WWD]
• Former Calvin Klein underwear model and Guess? campaign star Jason Lewis — also known as that hot guy Samantha starts banging on Sex And The City — is now shilling for something called Charisma Linens. [NYDN]
• Tory Burch is getting into microfinance for women entrepreneurs — domestic microfinance for women entrepreneurs. [TDB]
• A New York University-affiliated group has ranked Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, and Clinique as the top three luxury fashion brands, by "digital IQ." Strange that a company with so much apparent investment in its e-commerce division could show such an utter lack of understanding of the online media; Ralph Lauren's Filippa Hamilton Photoshop debacle, with its manifold examples of the company's digital stupidity, could be hurting the brand for years to come. [WWD]
• M.I.A. wore a $10 suit from Goodwill to meet Anna Wintour. [Twitter]
• Someone get 19-year-old French model Constance Jablonski a beer: she walked in 72 fashion shows in four cities in less than a month. [Models.com]
• Joe Corre, the famous loose cannon behind the Agent Provocateur label, has quit the brand abruptly. He will maintain his ownership share of the company, but no longer work for it. Instead, he'll concentrate on his men's wear line, called Child of the Jago. [WWD]
• Jennifer Connelly isn't returning as the face of Balenciaga. The brand's spring campaign is understood to feature Kasia Struss, and three other models. [Fashionista]
• Lacoste has collaborated with Brazilian industrial designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, and the results include a $7,000 polo shirt made entirely of the label's alligator appliqués, hand-sewn together in a lacey pattern. [WWD]
• Tommy Bahama is doing a line of shirts for Major League Baseball. The first one is for the next World Series. [Crain's]
• Patrick Robinson showed this season's Gap collection in Tokyo, after showing previous seasons in London and New York, to show that "We're all so super-connected. A lot of our stores are in big urban cities, and all of my friends now are all around the world." The designer continued, "But they're texting me and e-mailing me, and we're all connected. But we're also all trying to get back to nature. We're all starting to care about what we drink, and the food we eat, and where that food comes from. There's something about us that's longing to be back in nature. Those two things are sort of at odds with one another, and what I like about this collection is it sort of brings them together." Whatever. The guy makes incredible pants. [WWD]
• Marc Jacobs is bringing back its popular nude celebrity "Protect The Skin You're In" skin cancer awareness t-shirts. They cost $35, and all the proceeds go to the NYU Cancer Institute. [Hypebeast]
• L.L. Bean is trying to update its image with a new collection, designed by Rogues Gallery's Alex Carleton. [WWD]
• Some snooty society magazine editor named Rachel Johnson — Oxford-educated sister of London mayor Boris — decided it was proper to make fun of Twiggy's accent in her editor's letter. "I bumped into Twiggy at a Burberry event at London Fashion Week. I thanked her for being our cover girl. She went a bit blank but when I mentioned this publication her Bambi-eyes lit up and she said, 'Oi love The Lie-dee,' which made me feel very happy." [Daily Express]
• Abercrombie is planning on lowering its prices slowly and strategically, in the hopes of luring customers back without hurting its brand image. [NYPost]
• Burberry's sales in the most recent quarter rose 5%, to $545 million, ahead of analysts' forecasts. Same-store sales also rose 5%. [WSJ]

• 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]

• 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]

A Yale graduate...


A Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiast...


...a person who's seen the dark side of life and can appreciate the struggles of Jean Valjean...


An entertainer...


An intellectual...


A polyglot...


A sophisticate...


And, yes, a fellow devotee of the male skirt.

[Images via Getty]

• Ungaro's CEO says Lindsay Lohan was appointed creative director because, "Celebrities today attract lots of attention and having a moving, dancing, swinging, living doll is, we hope, going to bring down the age group at Ungaro while keeping the DNA."

• Linds has been working with Spanish designer Estrella Archs to produce Sunday's Ungaro collection in just three weeks, but when the New York Times stopped by the studio yesterday, "Ms. Lohan was conspicuous by her absence." [N.Y. Times]
• Christian Siriano will star in a Bravo reality show about him setting up a new shop and marketing his clothing line. [Variety]
• Suri Cruise's wardrobe has been valued at around $3.6 million. "They really splurge on Suri," says an insider. "Suri is very vocal when it comes to outfits. She's rarely seen in anything twice." [News.com.au]
• Isaac Mizrahi doesn't want you to call his new New York boutique a store. "I'm afraid to call it a store because that immediately makes you think about sales expectations," says Mizrahi. "It's more of an opportunity to show the collection and service the customer. I'm trying to get across the fact that clothing is a product of the creative process... Most designers are really good at retail. I always thought, ‘That's not my job.' This shop is me committing to retail." [WWD]
• Kim Kardashian is releasing her first fragrance in February with Lighthouse Beauty. Chris Lighty, a founding partner in the company, says, "Kim has created her own brand, which has really be able to extend off-screen and out of the reality show arena it started in. She's not a one-horse show." [WWD]
• Mariel Haenn, Rihanna's stylist, says of the look she'll be sporting to coincide with the release of her new album, "It's definitely going to be Rihanna in the raw state we've seen her in lately... Though she's an icon right now, this crazy super glam, we're going to see her being real—human. She hates too soft and girly... she still plays with her girly side, but there's always a tough piece somewhere, with edge." [Radar Online]
• Many designers are streaming their shows online this season including Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Emporio Armani, and Alexander McQueen. [Vogue]
• Burberry says it expects to boost operating profits by $6.4 million in the year ending in March 2010. It's re-negotiated its Japanese apparel license with two local partners and expects higher royalty payments than previously estimated. [WWD]
• Rather than having a huge relaunch, Nina Ricci unveiled its first collection under the creative direction of Peter Copping last night to only 75 people. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Mira Sorvino has been in New York this week asking people to donate suits to women who are trying to escape domestic abuse as part of the "Tell A Gal P.A.L." campaign sponsored by Allstate Foundation. People can donate business attire at Allstate offices through October 9. "The suits work in both a practical real way and a symbolic way," said Sorvino. "They give women a way to present themselves in a professional way." [WSJ]
• The costumes for Kylie Minogue's U.S. tour will be designed by Jean Paul Gualtier. [People]
• Crocs has entered into a new revolving loan agreement with PNC Financial Services group. The company can borrow up to $30 million under the new agreement. [Reuters]
• On The Bonnie Hunt Show yesterday Tim Gunn said of Michelle Obama wearing Crocs, "I like to think she was doing a footwear experiment... if she wasn't I'll do my first fashion intervention and show up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and insist I be taken to her closet." Video here: [People]

• Does Jay-Z reference Anna Wintour in his song "Empire State of Mind"? The line in question is: "caught up in the in crowd/now you're in-style/and in the winter gets cold en vogue with your skin out." [Fashion Week Daily]

• Earlier today it was reported that Michael Vick had resigned with Nike two years after the company dropped him when he was sent to prison for dogfighting. His agent said, "Mike has a long-standing, great relationship with Nike, and he looks forward to continuing that relationship." But, now Nike has released a statement saying it has not "contractual relationship" with Vick and it merely, "agreed to supply product to Michael Vick as we do a number of athletes who are not under contract with Nike." [AP]
• Michel Phan of the ESSEC Business School, which runs the world's only luxury brand management MBA program, says luxury retailers in Asia need to focus more on service. He explains: "It's not enough to say 'Our brand is expensive, or known'. You have to make customers connect with your brand, especially during this crisis, when they're more reluctant to buy on the spur of the moment. You have to give people a good reason to buy." [Reuters]
• Peter Copping, the new designer of Nina Ricci, says Ricci's romantic designs are in line with his personal taste and belief that customers want feminine clothes. In his previous job at Louis Vuitton, he says, "whenever we did more feminine-based collections, the sales were always incredible in the stores as opposed to the more austere or hard-edged things... Obviously, one has to find a way to make that contemporary, modern and fashionable." [WWD]
• On Tuesday, Giles Deacon received an award from France's National Association for the Development of the Fashion Arts along with a grant of $233,470 that will finance his spring fashion show in Paris. [WWD]
• Timberland has collaborated with Wyclef Jean to design a line of 16 boots. For every pair sold $2 will be donated to Yéle Haiti Foundation to support reforestation in Haiti. [WWD]
• At the D&G runway show in Milan, the chief executives of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman were put in the second and third rows while the chief executive of Yoox.com was in the front row. Bloggers have been invited to New York shows for a few seasons, but Europe is just warming to fashion bloggers who write for sites like Bryanboy.com, JakandJil.com, and GaranceDore.fr. [WSJ]
• Artist Brian Einersen created a Lady Gaga comic book that's selling at Marc Jacobs stores for $2. [Fashionista]
• Gareth Pugh is considering doing a fast-fashion line. He says: "I have considered it. The offers have come in, and every time we get an offer, I mull it over. I'd like more people to have access to my clothes, but the timing hasn't been right, or the project hasn't been right, or some combination of both those things. The first time I was approached, I wasn't even producing the garments I was showing on the runway. I didn't have a factory. Everything I was making, I was making by hand. Doing a fast-fashion collection seemed a little premature." He says companies should, "Keep asking. And I'll keep thinking." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Robert Lee Morris had to create toned down versions of his jewelry in during the recession in the early '90s, but now his more showy creations are becoming popular again. They were featured in several runway shows this fall and Henri Bendel will open a Robert Lee Morris boutique tomorrow. [N.Y. Times]
• At a party celebrating Sundance Channel's new show Man Shops Globe about Anthropologie buyer at large, Keith Johnson introduced guests to his partner Glen Senk, who fell in love with him in grade school. "I moved next door to him, at age 9, and the first day I saw him, I fell in love with him," Senk said. "It was otherworldly. I felt sparks all over my body. Literally, I saw stars. He was the kindest, sweetest, most wonderful person. I feel like that 44 years later." Johnson said, "It took a few years to convince me... He didn't convince me until I was 12." [N.Y. Times]
• Paolo Colonna, a partner in Permira, the European private equity firm that bought the Valentino Fashion Group, said that though the fund usually exits its private equity investments after four or five years, but, "The various [economic] crises will delay our exit. Still, we are patient money. This is a long-term deal for us. I don't see any urgency to sell at these low valuations." [NY Times]
• Giorgio Armani has reorganized his company, expanding the board of directors and delegating more power to non-family members. He's been suffering with a bout of hepatitis for months and says his illness was worsened by working long hours for decades. The reorganization is raising questions about whether the brand can outlive Armani. [WSJ]
• Pam Grier says, "I'm hoping the Smithsonian will call me for the dress from Foxy Brown. The blue one with the ruffles. I'm holding onto it. Call me, Smithsonian!" [Village Voice]

Even if you don't read Japanese, it's easy to get the gist of this "1 Month Review Of Carla" spread, and the editors put together a similar spread with Michelle Obama as the focus.


The "get the look"-type pages for both Michelle and Carla are cute.


But then there's this. A pale-skinned, blonde doll standing in front of a picture of the White House, clad in Louis Vuitton. You're thinking: "Yeah, but she's just posing. She's not replacing Michelle Obama."


Okay then. What the hell is this?


Don't worry, this doll gets around. She's also been seen with Sarkozy.


And she works with kids… Well maybe she doesn't work with them, but she does pretend to reach out to them.

Even more troubling: Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni are not big enough dreams for this gal.

She really wants to be Jacqueline Kennedy.

Or Paris Hilton.

• The stylist who allegedly walked out on Mark Fast's show says it wasn't because the models were too "fat" - but because they were too fat to walk right! "The walk is very important,'' she explains. [Mirror]

• The stylist in question is reportedly Erika Kurihara, fashion editor at hipper-than-thou London style mag i-D. [Frockwriter]
• "Another studio insider, Amanda May, has since tweeted that the names of the three models in question are Hayley, Laura and Gwyneth and that the company is 'so happy we stuck to our guns about the casting.'" [Frockwriter]
• Says Fast's creative director, "The decision to use fuller girls is something we have been talking about. There's an idea that only thin and slender women are able to wear Mark's dresses and he wanted to combat that. We wanted women to know they didn't have to be a size zero to wear a Mark Fast dress - curvier women can look even better in them." [Daily Mail]
• Burberry's multi-pronged approach for getting down with the kids: broadcasting their fashion week show online; Facebook; Twitter; and social media site, "Art of the Trench," which "will encourage customers and fans of the brand to upload pictures of themselves sporting a classic Burberry trenchcoat." [Racked]
• Wait, what? Apparently Clint Eastwood owns a clothing line, Tehama, and it's been bought by Nacabi Inc. [WWD]
• Kelly Cutrone: "I'm, like, the patron saint of interns. I made interning famous." Well, maybe Venerable. [New York]
• The ever-modest Tim Gunn on being named a "Top 5 Silver Fox": "Well, that's very flattering but I think someone is a little cuckoo." [MediaBistro]
• And who's the Loaded Gunn's favorite superhero? Batman, of course - "the most debonair of superheroes." [USAToday]
• A Philip Lim VIP show: An intern covered in vom and a careening model. Like a PhiDelt party, plus pleating. [Racked]
• Yoko Ono's fashion show for threeASFOUR is exactly as you'd imagine a runway show by Yoko Ono. Check it. [FashionWeekDaily]
• And Rick Owens' furniture line is exactly as you'd imagine a furniture line by the punky designer. "He calls the antlers on his angular plywood chairs "brutalist crowns," and said he loves the way their elegance contrasts with the chairs' crude wooden shapes. Plywood is one of his all-time favorite materials, and a staple, "the washed black leather," he said, of his furniture collections." [WWD]
• Perhaps inevitably, Yasmin LeBon has designed a fashion line, for Sir Philip Green's Wallis chain. It's allegedly very glam, and very good. No word on whether the iconic "Rio" video was an influence. [WWD]
• Louis Vuitton hits a snag in its epic fight to protect its TM: they've lost a fight to get Google and other search engines to stop using their name. [Telegraph]
• DeBeers - which has been linked to blood diamond mining - is talking about the role of diamond mining and climate control. Says the director: "We are making sure that we do not waste any water and that we have stepped up our programs." [WWD]
• Donatella Versace regards the recession as an "opportunity." Says the tanned titan vaguely, "The crisis is a big opportunity — it offers more stimulus for creativity ... more ideas come about." [Reuters]
• In case you were wondering what Lady Gaga considers the best costume for the Vogue offices? Here's Grace Coddington: "She was wearing Philip Treacy's hat with Vogue written on it when she came to see Anna, and when she came to see me the next day she had sprayed her hair red." [Fashionista]
• In their continuing desperation to change their staid image, the Gap is collaborating with awesome illustrator Garance Dore on a line of tees. [ElleUK]
• Twiggy is the subject of a retrospective exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Quoth the too-nice-for-ANTM super, "It's hysterical, and incredibly flattering. I think when you're living a life you don't mark down "this is this, and in 40 years' time I'm going to be that", you just live your life." [Telegraph]
• If there's one name you take away from London's Fashion Week, people, make it Christopher Kane. He is hottt. [NYTimes]
• And his TopShop line is, not shockingly, flying off the shelves - particularly the "crocodile dress." [Racked]
• Victoria Beckham and the other WAGs (for Yanks, that's "wives and girlfriends" of football stars; think, for fashion week purposes, Kim and Nene) have hit fashion week in full force, [ElleUK]

• Colin Firth won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in former Gucci designer Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man. [Vogue UK]
• Did Louis Vuitton make a $590 knock off of this New Balance sneaker? [WWD]

• If anyone had told me Courtney Love was going to perform at the Alexander Wang after party — held at a gas station in Chelsea — I would have totally stayed up, if only because last year I found a copy of Celebrity Skin in someone's back seat and started listening to it (and really enjoying feeling 15) again, instead of hauling my tired carcass to bed at 9:30. [DazedDigital]
• Audrey Tautou wore Lanvin to the Los Angeles premiere of Coco Before Chanel. [People]
• French actress Emanuelle Béart is rumored to be presenting her own clothing line at Paris fashion week next month. [WWD]
• Robert Verdi — sometime stylist to celebrities like Eva Longoria — can't get an invitation to Jason Wu or Marc Jacobs by hook or by crook. He suspects it's because fashion is "ignoring the gay people." [The Cut]
• Marc Jacobs publicist Timothy Mark Garcia is wearing an electronic monitoring device because of his house arrest. Garcia's father, a former Major General of the Philippines, is accused of paying for his son's Trump Plaza apartment with funds he stole from the Filipino people; the entire family is facing extradition. Garcia fils, who has a curfew of 9 p.m. — 1 a.m. during fashion week, with a 30-minute grace period for lateness — has been reduced to wearing his Cartier Tank watch and $1,000 Hermès bracelets in the privacy of his own home, and ordering take-out from the restaurant at Barneys. He says the ankle bracelet is uncomfortable, and "I can't even wear my knee high croc boots by Sergio Rossi for the fall." [TDB]
• Victoria Beckham says she's happy to have earned real fashion credibility. Victoria Beckham has earned real fashion credibility? [Telegraph]
• The pop-star-turned-designer missed her youngest son's first day of school to present her dress collection in New York. "I told them, 'Mommy's going to New York to do a test, you know, you have math tests. Well, Mommy has a fashion test.'" [WWD]
• For the first time in 12 seasons, Tim Gunn was not invited to Diane Von Furstenberg. Which gives us one more thing in common. [NYPost]
• Gunn, on Lindsay Lohan's appointment as Emanuel Ungaro's "artistic adviser": "It's got to be a publicity stunt. Or a crack-smoking board of directors!" [The Cut]
• Lohan kept an entire photo crew waiting for 10 hours at what was supposed to be a shoot for her own leggings line. [WWD]
• Diane Von Furstenberg says Fashion's Night Out was such a success she would love to see it become an annual event. [The Cut]
• Vince Shlomi, the ShamWow guy who allegedly beat a woman in Florida, has been seen around fashion week. Naturally, he's designing a swimwear line. [NYDN]
• Fashion periodically tends to reference homeless "style," and it stands to reason that the industry might do so particularly now, in the midst of a recession. A W editorial, a Sartorialist snap, and some year-old comments by Erin "Homeless People Have The Best Style" Wasson, does not a trend make, New York Times. (Wasson, for her part, feels that those comments were misunderstood. But perhaps the model should avoid making references to "people that you couldn't label and put in a box," when she is in fact talking about people who live in boxes.) [NYTimes]
• "Russian women are treated in a very Arabic way in our country," says supermodel Natalia Vodianova. "You are expected to give birth to children, look pretty and shut up. But we are very strong and intelligent people: there are a few of us out there. My whole life is breaking the stereotype of typical Russian women looking for money." [Telegraph]
• 1970s supermodel Robyn Peterson, once a favorite of Helmut Newton and now a successful actress, says "Fashion is a savage business — an industry that eats people up. Modelling is like being an athlete. It's a young person's game, but similarly no life for a young girl." She's probably just bitter. [Telegraph]
• Lesley Hornby — better known by her industry alias, Twiggy — turned 60 over the weekend. [Daily Mail]
• In other model news, if you want to know what Sessilee Lopez eats for breakfast, now's your chance. (Bodega croissant egg-and-bacon sandwich with coffee.) [Grub Street]
• Once in Milan, Miranda Kerr was walking on the catwalk when her shoe flew off into the audience. Nobody was hurt. [JustJared]
• America's Next Top Model's Danielle Evans made an appearance at the Leifsdottir presentation at New York fashion week. [Racked]
• Actual top models Anja Rubik, Lara Stone, and Raquel Zimmerman have all been absent from fashion week, so far. Although Raquel isn't in her agency's show package for the season, she is in New York, having attended Fashion's Night Out. Lara and Anja, who are in their respective agencies' show packages, aren't in town, having done Fashion's Night Out duty in London. So will we see them at all? It's been an unusually supermodel-light season, so far: even catwalk regular Natasha Poly has only walked Altuzarra and Alexander Wang, so far. [Fashionologie]
• Maybe the absence of so many top girls is due to an economic environment that means many designers cannot afford their rates? Agencies and models say that competition is high, pay is low — with payment in trade being more common than usual — and even Alice Gibb, normally a favorite of Rodarte and Marc Jacobs, says she's been un-booked from shows at the last minute. [Reuters]
• For all the models working for free, of course, there are any number of professionals who eschew such generosity. Forbes has a breakdown of who puts what into a fashion show, and who gets what out of it, from the producers to the stylists to the venue operators. [Forbes]
• The fashion industry in New York City generates about $1.5 billion in tax income, but the garment district is facing a re-zoning plan that could force the displacement of sample houses and manufacturers. [Reuters]
• The normally disapproving Daily Mail takes some time out of its busy day to celebrate girls in lingerie. Agent Provocateur's cheesy new superhero-themed ad campaign is the occasion. [Daily Mail]
• Mario Grauso is indeed leaving Puig. [WWD]
• Keith Pollock, the executive online editor for Brant Publications, says: "There are very respected fashion journalists that can evaluate the state of the market. However I don't see how a fashion editor's perspective on a Prada shoe is more valid than that of a teen blogger in Evanston, Illinois." This worries me very much. [NYTimes]
• Howard Socol, who resigned as Barneys New York C.E.O. in May of 2008, attended the 3.1 Philip Lim men's presentation at New York fashion week because Socol has been mentoring Lim. Socol took the time to count his blessings as one who is no longer running a high-end department store during a global recession; Barneys has yet to replace him. [WSJ]
• JC Penney has launched a new women's clothing brand, She Said, that will cater to the needs of working women. [Breitbart]
• The Colombian company that supplies the Body Shop with 90% of its palm oil successfully sued to have peasant farmers removed from a ranch north of Bogotá. Now 123 of the farmers are appealing the decision, and the ethics of the Body Shop's decision to buy palm oil from the company are being called into question. [Guardian]
• One of the more ridiculous reactions to the release of the Lockerbie bomber: Iconic Scottish company Harris Tweeds is "de-Scottish-ifying" its image in the U.S. in anticipation of a backlash against soft-on-terrorism Scots. [NPR]

Photo illustration images from Amazon and Louis Vuitton

Collins is ready with examples:

"Do you want me to hold something?" he will inquire. "Are you cold?" "Would you like a biscuit?" Adrian Hallewell, a chauffeur in Yorkshire, who has known Bailey since he was a boy, told me, "He keeps a low profile, does he, Christopher."

It's interesting that Burberry chose Bailey — whose father was a carpenter, and whose mother worked as a window-dresser at Marks & Spencer — as its new creative director in 2001, at a time when the venerable English house was trying, artfully and carefully, to distance itself from the appropriation of its brand by a distinctly lower-class kind of customer.

In order to revive Burberry from a beside-the-point position as a legacy brand, then-C.E.O. Rose Marie Bravo made Burberry and its distinctive beige-and-red check ubiquitous — but the paradox of an upscale-but-instantly-recognizable brand is that if it becomes too popular, or suffers from the wrong kind of exposure, the hard-won "upscale" image can evaporate. (Louis Vuitton waged a long-term fight to win back its identification with exclusivity by ending department store sales in favor of only own-store retail in the 1980s, but some would argue that the company's famous monogram — or imitations of it — metastasized to a brand-harming extent during the recent economic boom.)

In England, Burberry had gone from outfitting royalty, military top brass, and explorers to being worn by reality television personalities and second-rate soap opera stars making their first public appearances following septum-repair surgeries. (That would be Danniella Westbrook, of EastEnders, pictured above in 2002 with her daughter.) It used to count Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott, and Sir Ernest Shackleton as customers; by 2002, it had Jade Goody and a contingent of xenophobic soccer hooligans who were particularly fond of a $90 plaid hat.

Burberry stopped making the hat. It also began to devote much of its energies to policing its brand — no more pet products "in the famous Burberry design," or "Chavalier" Vauxhall Chevaliers with customized Burberry paint jobs. (Incidentally, virtually every tacky-Burberry example Collins offers up, including the "Chavalier," Westbrook, and a photo of a woman with Burberry-check acrylic nails, was highlighted in a thoughtful post about the history of the brand and its increasing identification with "chav" and football culture on the blog Finally Woken last November.) After new C.E.O. Angela Ahrendts took over in 2006, she discontinued many licenses and product lines she felt did not represent that brand well, or distracted from its core luxury image: "Burberry used to do little bottles of whiskey," said Bailey, "We're not experts on whiskey, so why the hell would we do whiskey?" Burberry Prorsum, the high-end line founded under Bravo's watch, is now the company's moody torch-bearer. But Bailey, who is understandably sensitive to any accusation of classism in the company's repositioning, especially in the class-fraught British context, is hesitant to cast the change in terms of sidelining "undesirable" customers. "I think that probably a lot of it was counterfeit," says Bailey, of the various Burberry-ish clothing items the paparazzi snapped in the early 2000s. In fact, the designer counts spotting one of his authentic designs in "a kind of skanky pub" as a highlight of his career, so far:

Few things please Bailey more than encountering his work in the nooks and crannies of the British experience — a trenchcoat draped over a Westminster politician's arm, lining out; a checked scarf, worn as a hijab, in the immigration queue at Gatwick. A small triumph of his career was spotting a checked purse that he had designed tucked under a table at a bar in Yorkshire. "It was this kind of skanky pub, and all of a sudden I was like, 'It's actually amazing that this little baby thing that I work on with my gang goes out into the world and then finds its way back to my home town,' " he said. "You want to know the story behind it."

Before coming to Burberry, Bailey worked at Donna Karan, and for another great recent fashion revival case, Gucci under Tom Ford. Although he didn't take much from Ford's sexy Cosmo-cover-line aesthetic, Bailey undoubtedly experienced an object lesson in how to design a venerable house away from the brink of irrelevancy.

Like almost every luxury company known to man, Burberry is facing hard times right now because of the economic crisis; since last fall, the company has laid off employees, closed factories, and still saw a 2008 loss of $8 million. (Perhaps partly because, as Collins notes, the company moved into expensive new purpose-built headquarters in London last November.) Nonetheless, Burberry has fared well enough since listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2004. Today, the company made the news when it was forecast to crack the FTSE 100 by the end of this week. With the news that Jaeger-reviver Harold Tillman is buying the fusty, bankrupt British classic outerwear label Aquascutum — with plans for a grand shake-up in place, according to British Vogue — it's clear that there are plenty of others seeking to meet the same challenges Burberry faced so recently.

Check Mate: Burberry's Working-Class Hero [New Yorker]
Harold Tillman Acquires Acquascutum [Vogue UK]
Burberry To Check In To FTSE 100 [FT]
Thinking About Buying Burberry? [Finally Woken]

• Did L.A. boutique Maxfield drop Victoria Beckham's dVb in favor of Holmes & Yang? Posh's people say Maxfield hasn't ordered the line for three seasons, and the decision had nothing to do with Katie Holmes, who is Posh's friend. [P6]

• Luckily, old bandmate Mel B says she loves Posh's clothing lines. "I'm going out with Geri and Emma while I'm here — and I'll be wearing one of Victoria's dresses," the singer told a crowd in London. [Daily Mail]
• American Apparel is laying off 1,500 workers — more than 10% of its total workforce — because of immigration violations. When ICE raided its factory in downtown L.A. two months ago, 1,600 workers were found to be unauthorized to work in the U.S., and a further 200 were found to have immigration irregularities. Company founder Dov Charney released a statement saying: "Many of you have been with me for so many years, and I just cry when I think that so many people will be leaving the company. It is my belief that immigrants bring prosperity to any economy." This is the latest in a long line of bad news for the company. From being dogged with sexual harassment lawsuits, to the $5 million settlement it had to pay Woody Allen in May after using his image on billboards without authorization, to this week's reprimand from the British Advertising Standards Authority for "sexualising a child," American Apparel can't seem to keep its house in order. [LATimes]
• There are behind-the-scenes shots of Lily Allen working with Karl Lagerfeld on the new Chanel Cocoon bag campaign. [DailyMail]
• We don't doubt that Patrick Demarchelier is planning to shoot 100 top models in Fashion's Night Out t-shirts outside Bryant Park on September 9, but somehow we think someone got confused when noting that "Iman and her daughter Chanel" would be among them. [WWD]
• OMG! Modelfights on Project Runway: Models Of The Catwalk. [P6]
• If you have any interest in beautiful, softly draped leather jackets, deconstructed tee shirts, or vaguely gothic skintight pants — or if you just want to know where that ubiquitous no-closure wraparound sweater, like a high-fashion snuggie ancestor, that everyone from Alice + Olivia to Eileen Fisher has knocked off came from originally — you need to learn about Rick Owens, now. And how his aesthetic is back in a big way just now. [NYTimes]
• Speaking of which, peep Jennifer Connelly in the British InStyle in Rodarte thigh-high boots and Olivier Theyskens' gothic heel-less 8" runway shoes. [Daily Mail]
• Also big for fall, at least in men's wear: Steve McQueen. [WSJ]
  
• There's a rumor going around that Peter Som is set to become the first creative director of Tommy Hilfiger. [WWD]
• Thom Browne is launching two new lower-priced lines for Spring 2010. [WWD]
• Mark your calendars! She by Sheree, apparently some design offspring of a Real Housewife, is coming to Fashion Week. [People]
• Juergen Teller, who shoots all of Marc Jacobs' campaigns, reports that only one set of images has ever caused any particular controversy — and it's not the ones of a then-12-year-old Dakota Fanning, which even the photographer calls "very hard-core." In Fall of 2006, Jacobs chose makeup artist Dick Page and his partner, James Gibbs, to star in the campaign, and Teller shot the couple making out in the woods outside their home. There was a furor: Men's Vogue even refused to run the ads. [The Moment]
• Kenny Chesney says his new clothing line, Blue Chair Bay, is designed to reflect his life off the stage. "I would wear these clothes in Malibu, East Tennessee, where I'm from, or on my boat in St. John," the singer explained at MAGIC, the apparel trade conference that just ended in Las Vegas. Chesney's apparel partners had an airstream full of clothes and purposefully-weatherbeaten blue wicker chairs parked in their booth at the show. [WWD]
• Daisy Lowe's jewelry line with Swarovski is said to feature pieces inspired by the stars, moon, and planets. [Elle UK]
  
• Derek Lam's CEO, Jan Schottlman, denies the anonymous reports published by Page Six that the company is haemorrhaging money. [The Cut]
• Dooney & Bourke are going back to models for their campaigns after seasons of using actresses. Hayden Panettiere is getting thrown over for Maggie Rizer. [WWD]
• Georgia May Jagger, in her new denim ad: "Hudson jeans. Soft...and blue. And very tight." Descriptive! [TDB]
• Richard Chai is doing a line with Keds. Chai's sneakers, which are canvas and leather in white, grey and black, have silver zippers between the rows of eyelets. They hit stores in January of next year, and pricing information isn't yet available. [WWD]
• Someone painted an entire Spanish Colonial-style bungalow in Louis Vuitton's signature logo print. So long as Britney Spears doesn't use it as the set for her next video, we imagine these folks in Mexicali might be safe from LVMH's lawyers. [BoingBoing via hazmeelchingadofavor]

• "I've thought about clothing and jewelry lines," says Usher. "But fragrance stays on when everything else comes off." [People]
• Bottom of the barrel? For $8, American Apparel will sell you a bag of fabric scraps. [BF]

• Elle Creative Director Joe Zee dined with R.J. Cutler, the director of The September Issue. Which obviously means that he's going to spend two more years making a movie about Elle now! [FWD]
• Says lost soul Ashley Olsen, in fashion, "everyone is just really looking out for themselves. I don't know if I'll be designing this collection forever. A couple of years from now, I'm sure I'll want to do something else, and I'm not going to shy away from that. What if I just want to be an artist, or if I want to go back to acting? Which is not in the cards, but what if I wanted to do that?" [Daily Express]
• An Hermès representative says the rumors that creative director Jean Paul Gaultier is going to leave the company are false. Gaultier has been in his position for six years, and Hermès has experienced continued strong sales from its luxury categories since the start of the recession. [FashionMag]
• Christian Blanckaert, Hermès' director of international affairs, is leaving the company in early September. Blanckaert will become the non-executive chairman of the French children's clothing line Petit Bateau, and is expected to pursue a more international strategy for the brand. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, some anonymous sources in the finance industry are saying that Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy may spin off DKNY, the Donna Karan diffusion label it has owned since 2001. Or that it may sell Moët Hennessy itself, where revenues fell 17% in the first half of 2009. The reason the luxury conglomerate supposedly wants to free up some cash? To make a bid for Hermès, which is trading well below its usual share price. [Fashionista]
  
• Conservative party supporter Anya Hindmarch: "I started my business when I was 18, and I realized the difference it made having Thatcher in power. It was the start of privatization-there was a feeling of ‘Get out there, get going, be an entrepreneur.' I've seen what politics can do to make a difference. It really inspires me and that's why I've been passionate about it." [VF]
• Lara Stone is set to curate the choices available at Not Just A Label's online shop, a home for avant-garde and emerging designers. Lara's choices go on sale on September 2. [UK Elle]
• Uniqlo has a licensing deal with Disney that'll allow it to roll out Disney-themed apparel starting next month. Which should mean the mouse products will hit stores around the same time as Jil Sander's long-awaited first collection for the retailer. [WWD]
• Jean-Charles de Castelbajac is launching a diffusion line called JC/DC. The line will be presented in London and again in Paris at the upcoming shows, and the company wants real-life hepcats to model its wares — anyone who wants to apply for a spot in the runway lineup can do so via the websites of Dazed & Confused or Jalouse magazine, respectively. [WWD]
• Someone named Bronson van Wyck is obsessed with "The Penguin Sparkling Water Maker from Williams-Sonoma. The penguin makes the water fizzy. You can adjust from superfizzy like Perrier to moderate like S. Pellegrino to milder like Hendon." Socials! They're not like us at all. [WWD]
• Vogue Brasil mis-spelled photographer Guy Bourdin's name as "Guy Bourdain" in huge font on its cover. [MadeinBrazil]
• Rosemary Port, the writer behind the infamous "Skanks In NYC" hate-blog against model Liskula Cohen, says that she will continue her $15 million lawsuit against Google for disclosing her e-mail address and IP to Cohen. Even though Google only disclosed those details after losing its long legal battle and being ordered to so by a Manhattan supreme court judge! Port feels her right to privacy has been violated, and alleges of Cohen, "By going to the press, she defamed herself." Her lawyer had this to say: "I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. Our Founding Fathers wrote 'The Federalist Papers' under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn't that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?" Which, if you think about it, is an airtight argument. Doesn't anyone else remember reading that long footnote in the Federalist Papers where James Madison goes on and on about how Brutus is, like, such a ho? And then of course next month Robert Yates was all like, Nuh uh, you're a big fat skank, Publius, and everyone knows it! Whatever, Rosemary Port. Defamation isn't traditionally considered protected speech. [NYDN]
• Louis Vuitton has won a $400,000 judgment against Bonini Handbags for trademark infringement. [WWD]
• Derek Blasberg watched The Rachel Zoe Project in Los Angeles, with Rachel Zoe. "Watching the actual show and having an alternate show happening in front of me was surreal. And kind of confusing. There was Brad on TV wearing a Missoni sequined shift dress impersonating his boss, and then there, in the flesh, was Brad trying on a Louis Vuitton tennis skirt and booties impersonating his boss. Taylor was on TV moaning, and there she was in person moaning." [StyleFile]
• Casual Male, a U.S. maker of men's plus-size clothing, has seen its quarterly profits increase by 92.1% on last year, even as sales fell 13.4%. [WWD]

• The details of Fashion's Night Out — aka Anna Wintour's Plan To Save Retail — have been announced. Over 700 stores in all five boroughs will be participating in events that range from sewing circles to cook-ins to rock shows:

• Celebs and designers who will be in attendance at the various festivities include Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, Francisco Costa, Manolo Blahnik, Isaac Mizrahi, Kate Mulleavy, Diane von Furstenberg, Liev Schreiber, Stephanie Seymour, and Anna Wintour herself. Although all the tee shirt customization and free music will be enough to drag us around to at least a few stores come September 10, we're also tremendously excited by the idea of taking salsa lessons taught by Juan Carlos Obando. [WWD]
• As is to be expected, Vogue is apparently attracting a lot of attention from cost-cutting consultants McKinsey. Dare we hope that McKinsey will shake things up at the tired mag, and shake them hard? In other Condé Nast news, Teen Vogue's very stylish accessories editor, Taylor Tomasi Hill, is leaving to take a position at Marie Claire. There are no plans to replace her. [Fashionista]
• Agent Provocateur is launching a new line of super-expensive lingerie it's calling couture. Agent Provocateur Soirée will launch with an in-season show at New York Fashion Week on September 9, and hit stores in November. Prices top £2450. [Elle UK]
• The second issue of Love is out, and it turns out the preview image that surfaced online last month actually is one of the covers — editor Katie Grand chose Alex Hartley, and 18-year-old bass player she found on the Internet, for one cover, and Sting spawn Coco Summer for the other. [Fashionologie]
• Katie Grand had 35 guests at her recent wedding. Thirty-five guests who finished 28 bottles of vodka. Our kid of woman. [ToL]
• Dasha Zhukova, the 28-year-old heiress, art gallerist, and Grand's replacement editor at Pop, is rumored to be pregnant by her 42-year-old boyfriend, Roman Abramovich. [P6]
• An image of Scarlett Johansson which might be part of the ad campaign for a Dolce & Gabbana perfume launching later this year has leaked. The perfume is called Rose The One, and the picture is very soft and rosy looking, plus Johansson is already confirmed to be the face of the scent, both of which are signs that point to yes. [SassyBella]
• Tori Spelling has launched a children's clothing range. Little Maven will cost $26-$88, and is designed for kids up to 4 years of age. [Daily Mail]
• Naomi Campbell and Queen Rania of Jordan were introduced while holidaying in the south of France. There's no word on what they discussed upon meeting. [Daily Mail]
• The mayor of Kennesaw, Georgia, which is male model Sean O'Pry's hometown, is today giving the 20-year-old an official proclamation, because O'Pry speaks highly of Kennesaw in the interviews he does between gigs for Armani and Calvin Klein. [P6]
• Comme des Garçons and Converse are giving their collaboration wider distribution this fall. Four styles of the Comme des Garçons-designed sneakers will go on sale in select cities at the end of this month, and worldwide in October, for $100 a pop. [WWD]
• When asked about the person who irrevocably changed the way she looked at fashion, Heidi Klum generously named Karl Lagerfeld, despite the designer's stated dislike of her. [Newsweek]
• Everybody is wearing Lolita glasses. And by everybody, we mean Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Katy Perry, Nicole Richie, Kelly Osbourne, and Kim Kardashian. Clearly we ought to be wearing them, too. Or something. [NYDN]
• If you are a man who wants to buy Levi's jeans that are "re-created using the original techniques from 1873" for $395, you can do so, at J. Crew's downtown men's stores. [WWD]
• Riam Dean, the young woman who was asked to work in the stockroom by Abercrombie & Fitch because of her prosthetic arm, has sold the full, terrible story of her experience of discrimination to the Daily Mail. Dean says the £9,000 she won from the company in damages hasn't covered her legal fees. [Daily Mail]
• Hats are back, again. This story gets re-written every six months. [WSJ]
• The alligator "harvest" begins later on this month in Florida, but wildlife experts expect the number of the creatures that will end up as purses this year to be drastically reduced: while revenue from alligator skins topped $71 million in Florida in 2007, a mere $10 million is this year's industry estimate. What doesn't make sense about all these stories about exotic skins, whether alligator, crocodile, or python, losing their marketplace appeal, is the fact that among luxury categories, the bridge products — wallets, keychains, and other "aspirational" branded baubles — are the ones that are experiencing the steepest decline in sales. Brands from Hermès to Louis Vuitton have reported that their most expensive offerings, like exotic skinned bags, are still experiencing strong sales — if not actually leading sales across the whole brand. So what gives? Are the pythons and gators going to be left to their own devices in the Everglades this season, or not? [MSNBC]
• H&M's same-store sales fell 3% on last year during the month of July; analysts had expected a more modest 1% drop, since the fast fashion chain has been performing relatively well in the recession so far. [Reuters]
• Following another disastrous quarterly result, Abercrombie has announced it plans to further cut its prices. [WSJ]
• Escada USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, one day after the German parent company opened bankruptcy proceedings there. [WWD]