Yesterday, I went to a "depression-era films" festival at a revival house. I saw a double-feature: one about plucky lovers in a Hooverville and another about dizzy moguls and their extravagant wives. It was great! And between the two, felt pretty topical: a combination of escapism and empathetic grit - to say nothing of three for the price of one movies! - is what we crave in hard times.

This time around, no one seems to know just how to handle luxury. As the Wall Street Journal puts it,

It's hard to fathom the recent announcement that Brioni and Cartier teams took second and third place at the Cartier Polo World Cup on Snow last month. Polo on snow in St. Moritz? The whole luxury-subsidized event seems as out of touch as a crocodile bicycle seat.

Accordingly, folks - even the still-very-wealthy - are cutting back on the luxe, and Fashion Week will be correspondingly subdued. All very conscientious, I'm sure, but is that really what we want? I, for one, get a sort of perverse thrill out of reading about the vile excesses of that Polo match. We know people are rich; pretending to be modest to protect our sensibilities doesn't really solve anything. Of course, I'm not saying people want it rubbed in their faces - the reaction to GOOP is proof-positive of that - but in a sense there is something reassuring about luxury carrying on, provided it's not at the expense of practicalities. What we want is acknowledgment of the situation, and then permission to carry on. Matter-of-factness. Of course, I'm not fooling myself that anyone's capable of turning out Capra-quality satire nowadays (and the finance-free universes of He's Just Not That Into You are not what I'm talking about) but our intelligence deserves no less.

The New Shopping Psychology [Wall Street Journal]

• Fur is necessary for "killing those beasts who would kill us if they could," says the world's creepiest man, Karl Lagerfeld. Then he tackles the real issue: the "zillions of the fat." [Telegraph]

• Were slash and burn discounts just the beginning for flailing retailers? [FT]
• Depressingly, the bad holiday sales mean a lot of bankruptcy. [CNN]
• In the UK alone, financial types are predicting 440 closures in the next months. [,a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/more-than-400-retailers-to-collapse-within-months-1220216.html">Independent]
• At least the reaper's democratic: as Chanel cuts employees, "no luxury brand is safe." [NYT]
• Uniqlo, meanwhile, says the secret to their cashmere mafia's success is ordering from the mills off-season. [The Street]
• Charity Soles4Souls is, for unclear reasons, tying 26,000 shoes together in Nashville. Hey, it got our attention! [NYT]
• Fashion predictions for this year? "Cheap copies." [Guardian]
• As Naomi Campbell can tell you, hair extensions lead to bald patches. [Daily Mail]
• Jodie Kidd on the perils of modeling:"It's easy to get swept up in the whole first-class Ritz lifestyle. And that's not me. I hadn't seen my best friend. I hadn't gone to the pub. I hadn't gone to the movies. Then I started getting panic attacks and I wasn't quite sure why I was anxious, because I was working and earning. But I just wasn't happy. I wasn't grounded. I needed to see my family. I needed to walk around in wellies and muck out a stable. I needed to get back to Jodie. Country Jodie." [Daily Mail]
• The Nuclear Wintour will be speaking (!) in New York this May on "the impact of Vogue." PETA, presumably, will be present. [Fashionista]

• Courtney Love vs. PETA: "Yep, I'm a fur whore... I've been very, very good for a very, very long time, and this ermine is ancient and tattered and feels like it belonged to a Queen." [Daily Express]

• We know Kate Moss has been a big hit for TopShop but...Christina Aguilera? The megastore “believes she would add something new to TopShop. Christina is the blonde bombshell who is into pop whereas Kate is the rock chick and model." [The Mirror]
• The utilitarian shoes famously ducked by lame-ducker Bush has become best-sellers for their Istanbul cobbler. "I have a sensitive relationship with this shoe. I designed it myself, so it's like a father and a child. I was very happy when I saw it on the video," quoth he. [Christian Science Monitor]
• Boyfriend jeans have spread their poison to India. "You might soon see Bipasha Basu in John Abraham’s jeans and Kareena Kapoor in Saif’s denims. This trend — ‘Boyfriend jeans’ — has become quite a rage in west and is fast catching up here, with Delhi’s hi-street brand outlets stocking the style." [Hindustan Times]
• Embattled jersey-porn peddlers American Apparel are being sued by an alleged European whistle-blower. [WWD]
• The New Yorker does the wincey treatment on Marni."This holiday season, I longed for world peace, universal health care, an end to poverty and disease, and, most of all, one of those chunky Marni necklaces made from colorful shapes of melted and stretched bovine horn. Oh, and could I also have that strand of fabric-covered beads anchoring a large plastron of midnight-blue resin? And the pendant that looks like a conference pass except that, instead of a name tag inside the clear plastic pouch, there’s a grid of acrylic gems?" [New Yorker]
• Sahar Daftary, the model who tragically fell to her death from a Manchester apartment, may have recently suffered a miscarriage after learning her boyfriend was married. Her family denies suicide and has requested a second post-mortem. [Telegraph]
• Dspite generally disappointing results from Target's accessories collaborations (accessories just can't help looking kinda budget, we suppose) we're cautiously optimistic about Hayden-Harnett's upcoming line. Quoth the Brooklyn twosome: “The thought, print development and design approach for the Target collection was exactly the same as for our own collection - style, quality, function and uniqueness...The only real difference is that we didn't do the Target collection production ourselves.” [The Fashion Informer]
• Chanel lays off 200 as luxury market continues its slump. [Guardian]
• The luxe sector is hoping Asia will be a more fruitful market. [CBS News]
• Online sales were slightly better this holiday season...which is not to say good. [WSJ]
• Is this because more women are online nowadays? Because why would we be online except to SHOP TIL WE DROP?! [WWD]
• NB kids: the much-ballyhooed Thakoon for Target is spreading cut-rate patterned cheer as we speak! [Fashionista]
• Fabsugar has named Leighton Meester aka Blair Waldorf the year's best-dressed. What say you? [Fabsugar]

Alla Prokopov and Galina Royzman are personal shopping superstars. In what the Times calls "a city of big-league saleswomen, where it’s possible in a fancy store for a person working on commission to earn $250,000 or more annually," these two are still anomalous, and a Russian Mob joke is almost irresistible.They work apart from Bergdorf's normal team of shoppers, have their own "VIP dressing room," a team of assistants, high-profile "private clientele" and are highly elusive: initially the store doesn't want a reporter talking to "their Russian stars."

They do everything as a team, racking up some of the store’s highest sales numbers, according to executives. It’s not unusual for a client to spend $25,000 to $50,000 with them in a morning of shopping, although once a client dropped around $360,000; and just six months ago another spent $275,000. That was in a single day. Despite working through at least two recessions, the women say they usually meet their annual sales goals.

The pair work with a number of high-profile Russians (an ever-expanding luxury market), various Europeans, and wealthy New Yorkers — although naturally all identities are confidential. While obviously judgment and knowledge of a client's tastes (and, apparently, rad makeup) are necessary, both shoppers are known for their honesty. “'We learned a long time ago never to lie to a customer. If we don’t think a dress is right for her, we tell her.'" Which, when you're talking couture prices, is not a small matter.

No question these women are good at what they do — and that it's fascinating to get a glimpse into their world — but is a job like this, totally dedicated to luxury, an embarrassment in times like these? Bergdorf's seems to feel so; apparently the implicit frivolity of the occupation and the prices of the clothes were behind the store's reluctance to allow press access to the shoppers. But I think this is a miscalculation on their part: we expect a certain grotesque excess from the rich, and catering to wealth is not anything to be ashamed of, especially when it's a finely honed and specific skill. Far more patronizing is the attitude that we can't handle the existence of wealth, that we require everyone to make a sanctimonious pretense of frugality for a few weeks. Have your Christmas parties! Buy your expensive stuff! We can take it. Also: where do we fill out an application for mysterious elite shopper positions? And is discretion mandatory?

East or West, They Speak Chanel [New York Times]

Says Newsweek's Johnnie L. Roberts:

Unofficially, profligacy became passé on Oct. 6, when disgraced Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld appeared at a congressional hearing after the firm's historic $600-billion bankruptcy. He encountered a blizzard of scorn over his half-billion-dollar compensation and baronial lifestyle: a $21 million Park Avenue penthouse, a $25 million estate in Greenwich, Conn., and an estimated $200 million art collection.

Since then, we've seen Vogue slumming it at Wal-Mart and luxury ad numbers drop.

It seems like even if the uberwealthy are not personally suffering, it's now in poor taste to flaunt what you've got. Call it conspicuous austerity: a newfound sensitivity has made restraint temporarily chic. And not all luxury brands can keep up: according to the New York Times,Time Style and Design, which closed before the economic downturn, now feels anachronistically tone-deaf as the totaled items "would cost more than $51 million, or about 340 times the annual income of its average reader." As one woman told The Guardian, "now, when someone admires my dress, I never say it is by Balenciaga or Bottega Veneta. I tell them it's an old Phillip Lim. This neatly conveys the message that, just like everybody else, I've cut back on shopping and am happy to wear something by a modest label." And according to the article, luxury goods makers are taking different tacks: "highlighting heirloom appeal, ", "cultivating a guilt-free image" by teaming up with charities, or allowing secret splurging with sites like Gilt.com, that send purchases in unmarked brown boxes. Says The Guardian article, "the web offers the perfect opportunity for a new breed of 'stealth shoppers', embarrassed about flaunting their wealth, or what is left of it."

While asceticism is a reality for most of the world right now, it seems unlikely that everyone with riches of this magnitude will be able to maintain such a low profile after the novelty really wears off: empathy has its limits, after all - that or the luxury industry will get wily enough to get around peoples' guilt altogether. The Depression, as we know, saw some of the starkest contrasts the country has ever known, and historically speaking, great poverty has never dampened the relative pleasures of money much. If restraint is in with people who can afford it, well, they can afford to get tired of it in a year, too - which is probably what the $175-billion global luxury market is counting on.

Luxury Shame [Newsweek]
Celebrating Luxury In The Time Of Melancholia [New York Times]
Stealth Shoppers Shun Stores And Splash Out On Luxuries Online [The Guardian]

But when you're a luxury brand, you're special. You don't want to seem low-rent, like a dishwashing detergent. So you're can't just make a commercial. You've got to make a film, and it's got to be for the interwebs. Marcus Black, the editor of Specialten, a bimonthly magazine on DVD, explains: "Magazines are losing out to computers. What people are sitting in front of is where advertisers want to be."

But here's the question: Does it work? Do people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in Prada see the trippy Trembled Blossoms and buy a Prada bag? How about that existential crisis LV ad? (I was in a movie theater when the Louis Vuitton commercial appeared on screen and people in the audience actually hissed.)

As for Dita, at least her "film" is straightforward: No mythical beasts or sense of ennui. Just a great-looking gal in well-fitting bra. Wouldn't you buy that?

Fashion Film Gets A Life Of Its Own [International Herald Tribune]
Earlier: The New Prada Movie Stars Very Shady Characters
Let's All Take Acid And Watch The New Prada Movie
Another Luxury Brand, Another Existential Film

• We don't think we can design clothes, so why do clothing designers think they can blog? The Proenza Schouler boys, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, will be blogging for the New York Times's T: Style magazine's new site all this week. Says T's online editor, "One of the things I'm trying to avoid is solipsistic navel-gazing." Um, good luck with that! [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• What would you do with $15 million? If you're Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana, you use it to give your New York flagship store a little make-over! [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• And apparently it took $15 fucking million for Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana to haul their Italian booties here to New York. The designers will be back in New York for the first time in two years to celebrate the re-opening of their store at a private dinner tomorrow night. No, we weren't invited. [NYP]
  
• Say what you will about Sarah Jessica Parker, but at least she understands decorum. Of super low-rise jeans she says, "There is not going to be any inappropriate midriff showing, regardless of age," she says. "It's provocative in a way that I just don't feel comfortable with." Also? Kind of 5 years ago. [Daily Express]

• Prepare yourselves, people: Snowjoggers are the new Uggs. Just as ugly, and worn by Lohan too! [Independent]
• Stop the madness! Fashion houses are now hiring meteorologists as consultants to help them best predict the upcoming weather patterns and what kinda clothes folks are going to want to wear given the climate. Ridiculous? Or inspired? [NYT]
• The new apartment building in New York designed by Zac Posen's boyfriend is being shot by Elle international creative director Gilles Bensimon for an "advertorial" for Elle Decor. Follow? No? The lesson here is: It's all about who you're fucking. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Claire Danes walked as a model for Cynthia Rowley when she was 16. And waved to the other model going the opposite direction. Thank God this bitch isn't always so perfect! [Sassybella]
• Teen Vogue continues its strange dance between "art" and life as senior editor Kimball Hastings leaves the Condé Nast title to become the head of celebrity dressing for Polo Ralph Lauren. First: That's an actual job? Second: Apparently now Hastings himself is a "celebrity" because, uh, he's been on The Hills. [WWD, 1st item]
• The Wilhemina modeling agency is 40 years old! Mazel tov, models. [WWD, 5th item]
• Luxury markets? Not doing so well. Our guess? People are over expensive shit. [WWD, sub req'd]
• You've heard of a shaman — Rupert Sanderson is a shoe man. And when he sees a woman on the street in a pair of his handcrafted shoes, he has been known to "hurr[y] along behind her checking the balance and the line of the shoe, to see whether she [is] comfortable walking in them. [Then I] realise that I [am] getting a bit close though so I ha[ve] to cross the road in order not to appear like a stalker. But I got a better perspective on the shoes from the other side anyway." [Vogue UK]
• Burberry designer Christopher Bailey not only won Menswear Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards last week, but he also took home the Bambi Award for Fashion on Thursday and an honorary degree on Friday. All these people giving him accolades do know that he designs for Burberry, right? [Vogue UK]
• OMG cutest thing ever: A website where you can try to find your glove's lost mate! [Sassybella]

Anthony Kleanthous, a senior policy adviser at WWF, said most of the luxury companies did well in some areas but were weak in others. "Luxury companies do not consider their products to be particularly damaging to the environment," he said. "They just don't think people are going to be asking the questions. But there has been a paradigm shift." In fact, in a recent survey of 950 high-income American adults, 57% said they'd pay more for a brand that had socially responsible practices. 70% look for brands with "superior environmental records."

Meanwhile, Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, and designer Tom Ford seem to agree. They attended the International Herald Tribune conference on luxury, and spoke about so-called "ethical luxury" — products that "define their owners or wearers as people with human and ecological consciences." Said Ford: "Luxury is not going out of style. It needs to change its style. We need to replace hollow with deep." (He also mourned the state of luxury in the 1990s, when "luxury went from hard to find to hard to miss.")

And if making luxury products eco- and employee-friendly winds up inflating price tags, so be it. As Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, says in a Q&A in AdWeek: "Affordable luxury is a contradiction in terms. Those luxury brands racing to transform themselves into affordable luxury by making deals with mass retailers have forgotten that their business model is not just about stamping out more products."

Do luxury brands have a responsibility to be ethical? Can they be, while selling fur, ostrich, fine cashmere? And would they make a difference in the world? And, despite what the survey said (people lie!) do luxury consumers actually care how something was made? Or do they just want the logo?

Luxury Brands Fail To Make Ethical Grade [Financial Times]
At IHT Luxury Conference, Ethics Are In Vogue [International Herald Tribune]
Q&A: A Social Approach for Luxe Brands [AdWeek]
Earlier: My Week With A $4000 Snakeskin Handbag

Portfolio, Issue One has some enjoyable stuff, including a somewhat drab fashion industry blog that reminds us why we here at Jezebel try to distract you from our own dubious assertions with pretty pictures.

On April 11, for instance, "Fashion Inc." blogger Laurie Goldstein Crowe (rendered in an illustration and presumably not as thin as Lipman) writes:

Umbra Fist, a columnist writing for Grist, an environmental news and advice site, recommends that we should be "buying fewer clothes." Well, OK for the environment, but what about the economy?

This got me thinking, perhaps the best way for luxury brands to counter the rise of H&M, Zara, and the new COS (which I adore), is to communicate to consumers that buying fewer, better things is the best way to save the planet. Luxury is also sweat-shop free.

Which sounds good and all, but if the "luxury brands" of which she speaks are really worried about competing with H&M and Zara, they are probably not "sweat-shop free", since anything LVMH makes that's priced accessibly to a Zara shopper is made in China. And if you're genuinely worried about the long-term health of the economy, you've probably found better places to invest your wad than the Birkin bag waiting list. But hey, no one's tapped us to sell ad pages against that message!

P.S. Joanne: Glamour's Cindi Leive wants your diet Dos and Don'ts!

Fashion Inc. [Portfolio]
In Troubled Times, A New Business Magazine [New York Times]