• Like many 66-year-olds we know, Betsey Johnson is eyeing retirement. "I should be retired. I'm basically screwing up because I'm not retired. I'd like to go in four days a month, something like that," says the designer.

• Johnson is planning to hand over the reins to her second-in-command, Eric Sartori, after her show this September. But she'll stay involved. "I'll be a mega-consultant. I'll go in. I want to be like Ralph [Lauren]. Like, I always imagined the perfect life is like Ralph, where he goes in, and his wonderful expert crews show him work, and he goes, 'Love it, love it, love it, um, we'll just put that aside for the moment, love it, love it, hmmm.' You know what I mean? And be that — be the inspiration, the light at the end of the tunnel, the fairy godmother that comes down." [The Cut]
• Two images from Karl Lagerfeld's Fall 2009 Chanel campaign, which he shot himself on his Vermont farm, have hit the Internet. The ads star Freja Beha Erichsen and Heidi Mount, and have a nice, old-fashioned, rural feel. Mount and Erichsen sort of look like stylish, Stepford Mennonites. [Fashionologie]
• There's more solarized Madonna psychedelia at the other end of this link, if you are curious to just what extent the pop star has been airbrushed into doll-like plasticity by Pascal Dangin for the Fall 2009 Louis Vuitton campaign. [Design Scene]
• Artist Marilyn Minter contributed a video of models sucking on multi-colored sparkly goo, titled "Green Pink Caviar," to Madonna's Sticky & Sweet tour. (You can watch part of it here if you're not actually going to see Madonna.) "She actually paid me a bunch of money," says Minter. [WWD]
• Sasha Fierce for Deréon Back-To-School collection: It's happening. In any color you want, so long as it's black. [WWD]
• A battery-powered, bugle-beaded light-up glove worn by Michael Jackson on tour in 1984 will go under the hammer on October 1. [Reuters]
• On July 17, clothes from Giles Deacon's back catalog will be presented in four free catwalk shows at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. [Telegraph]
• As J.Lo begat Glow, so Glow begat Glow After Dark, which begat Sunkissed Glow, which begat Miami Glow, which begat Still. Still begat in its turn Love At First Glow By J.Lo. Love At First Glow begat Deseo, which begat Live By Jennifer Lopez. Live begat Live Luxe. And this fall, Live Luxe shall beget My Glow By Jennifer Lopez. So there are ten generations of Jennifer Lopez Perfume, ten generations of perfume in her decade of Fame. The People saw and said it was Good. [People]
• Naturally, pictures have emerged from Chanel Iman's "internship" at Teen Vogue. Turns out the model poked her head into the styling closet, like any fashion magpie, after a mid-afternoon go-see. And then she stayed and helped the other interns organize it for the whole rest of the day. She must have spent 1.5-2 hours there, stacking shoes! And she didn't even share any decent gossip. [TeenVogue]
• Far more successful is Coco Rocha's E! Canada special on fashion week. The model buttonholed Heidi Klum for some television hosting advice. Heidi says: Eye contact, don't prepare or rehearse too much, and wear something short. [FWD]
• Juergen Teller: "Everything is how you dress. Everything. I would never do some sort of stupid picture where everything is dark and you can't see the fabric or whatever, or crop something badly so you don't get the right impression of a garment. I did have my problems with fashion before, maybe. As a heterosexual man, I was always a bit embarrassed of being a fashion photographer and didn't have the confidence to describe myself that way. Now I do have the confidence. It's a weird thing to do, I know, but I just kind of got into it and I think I do it very well." [Independent]
• Racked has photos of Leanne Marshall's Bluefly line. The tops and dresses were snapped right off the rack during the e-tailer's photo shoot, so it's a little hard to see exactly how boring they are. [Racked]
• Not content with extending her jewelry line into an "equestrian"-inspired clothing range and a line of shoes and bags, Nicole Richie is also tackling maternity wear, for A Pea In The Pod. "It's her Bohemian style," said a spokesperson for the retailer's parent company. [WWD]
• British fashion icon Zandra Rhodes has crashed her station wagon through the window of a hardware store in Texas. One person inside the store was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries; it's unclear whether any charges will be filed. [Telegraph]
• Justin Timberlake and Trace Ayala unveiled the William Rast label they co-founded at Selfridges in London — and gave interviews that made no mention of the extremely talented designers, Johan and Marcella Lindeberg, who have made the line such a success. [UK Vogue]
• American Apparel has been cited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for allegedly employing an estimated 1,600 illegal workers. ICE believes that up to one third of the California-based clothier's workforce is in the country illegally. [WSJ]
• H&M, Louis Vuitton, and Wal-Mart topped a survey of consumer brand valuation. Which means we love cheap stuff that looks expensive, expensive stuff that looks cheap, and cheap stuff that looks cheap? [WWD]
• Crabtree & Evelyn has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. The company has 126 stores, and around 950 employees. Its stated hope is to close some of its stores and renegotiate its leases, but any business that loses $13.3 million in fiscal 2009 can't have a great outlook. [ToL]

• Who is Tory Burch's elusive 23-year old stepdaughter Pookie? On Mondays, Pookie interns for Bruce Weber, and the rest of the week she works as the assistant to the president of Carolina Herrera, and she was (allegedly) responsible for the magical pairing of New York's leading faux-WASP ice princess with Princess Coldstare, but alas, we have scoured the Google and cannot find a picture of her. So this will have to do. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• M.I.A has designed her own eponymous clothing line, which is really brightly colored so that, "if you lose it or someone steals it, you can see it from miles away and you can be like, 'Oy! Give me my shirt back!'" Oy is right! [WWD, 3rd item]
  
• Tinsley Mortimer, you see, is not a bad designer of handbags, it's just that she made the mistake of trying to sell them in Japan. "Japanese girls have no use for clutches because they just go to the clubs right after work. They are so different from New York. Stylewise, colorwise, stylewise. It's very youth-oriented. I'm designing for women between the ages of 20 and 40... But in Japan, after 25, it's like, basically, you're dead." [NYMag]

• "Now that I've been modeling some, I can actually stand in high heels—at least for a night." Oh, Hagyness. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Meanwhile, poor Erin Wasson broke her foot running in stilettos while shooting the ad campaign for Justin Timberlake's clothing line, William Rast. Doctors say her bones were fragile due to the amount of time she has spent in her life in heels. Ouch. [NYMag]
• Are you ready for Tuesday night's Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala? [Is that a trick question? -Moe] The theme is superheroes because "the superhero is the overarching metaphor for fashion, because both share this obsession with the body, identity and transformation." [WWD, sub req'd]
• No actually, explains Diane Von Furstenberg, superheroes are just super-trendy right now. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Poor Nicole Fahri was mugged at knifepoint outside her home! [Mirror UK]
• "My wife and I had a great time just sitting and going through things and working on what we liked the best...I would love to see her have a fragrance, and us to have one together — a unisex fragrance. That would be wonderful. She's a lot more expensive than I am." Tim McGraw on his new eponymous fragrance and his oft-PhotoShopped wife, Faith Hill. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Virtual Christian Siriano prom dresses? We're confused. Explain this to us, please. [Gaia]
• Oscar de la Renta shot his Fall/WInter 2008 ad campaign at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Which is, um, really random and has nothing to do with polio? [WWD, sub req'd]
• Is former Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane doing a line for Diesel? Eh, probs. [WWD, 3rd item]
• Naomi Watts is the new face of Thierry Mugler's Angel fragrance. We are so happy for her. [WWD, 2nd item]
• Martin Margiela is trying to go mainstream. Have you never heard of him? Well, that's cause he's so not mainstream. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Kiki Smith, Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger, Ashley Bickerton, Kenny Scharf, Glenn Ligon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kerry James Marshall, Hanna Liden and Sarah Sze are all collaborating with the Gap on a series of t-shirts. [WWD, sub req'd]
• And Elie Tahari is collaborating with artist Kenny Scharf, too. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Alice Temperely: Showing in London come September for the first time in six seasons. Buh-bye, New York. [Vogue UK]
• Colin McDowell, fashion editor of The Sunday Times of London, is leaving the paper to become creative editor-at-large of Net-a-Porter and spearhead its original editorial content. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Revlon: In debt. But less so now than before. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Elizabeth Arden: Profits are down. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Same goes for Bebe. [WWD, sub req'd]
• And Steve Madden! Hmmm, I wonder what it all means? [Crain's]

Above is the original ad for Tom Ford's fragrance. And we all know what the Terry Richardson ads looked like.

One of my favorite paintings of Minter's is from her 1989 series of pornographic imagery. I love how the dripping paint looks like cum.

She was sort of attacked by anti-porn feminists at the time, accused of perpetuating the objectification of women. In her book she says that she approached these pieces by asking herself:

What images have women never touched? What images have women never really explored? And does it change the meaning of these images if they are explored by women and not men? I was trying to explore areas that hadn't been explored and I didn't have any kind of fully formed motivation, which was my downfall. I was just asking questions, but everybody wanted me to come with the answers. I learned that there are no answers when it comes to talking about sexuality. It will spit in your eye; you cannot program it; you can't make rules about it. It is very messy and very untidy.

But one of the best aspects of her book is the inclusion of the seminal "Coral Ridge Towers," a series of haunting black and white photos of her drug-addicted mother, who rarely left her bedroom. Minter took the photos in 1969 for a class while an undergrad at the University of Florida, but never allowed them to be seen until 1996.

• Christina Ricci, the face of the re-launched Samsonite Fashionaire collection, gave some bullshit answer at the line's launch party about how fashion is art, blah blah blah. At this point we would like to remind Christina that she's not shilling fashion. She's shilling luggage. [Vogue UK]
  
• In the words of Yogurt from Spaceballs: Merchandising! Merchandising! Merchandising! Now Project Runway has caught the bug and has forged a licensing deal with everything from sewing machine to textile manufacturers to throw the Project Runway logo on their goods. [NY Post]
  
• Badgley Mischka are debuting a daytime dress collection this fall at a much less expensive price point than their signature eveningwear collection. This is still not enough for us to forgive them for the whole Teri Hatcher thing. [WWD, sub req'd]

• Having just now gotten past their faux pas of wearing Italian designer Prada to husband French President Nicolas Sarkozy's inaugration a few months ago, France's new first family is now in trouble for vacationing in Connecticut and shopping at the Ralph Lauren store in that most all-American of cities, Boston. [WWD, 1st item]
• In Japan, clothing boutiques and art galleries are becoming one. Which sorta makes perfect sense, since both hock expensive shit whose purchase can only be rationalized through pseudo-intellectual rantings on aesthetics. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Infinitely better designed than the Kate Moss line is the Celia Birtwell line for Topshop, in stores and available online this week. [Vogue UK]
• Tom Ford: Not just misogynistic, but passive-aggressive too! The asshole designer will host a party for photographer Marilyn Minter celebrating her work the day before New York Fashion Week begins. Even though he uh, fired Minter from being the one to shoot the Tom Ford for Men advertising campaign. [Fashion Week Daily]