• After years of establishing her reliability and commitment to quality, LiLo has gone all weirdly entrepreneurial on us! She's launched her own brand development company. "With Lohan serving as the public face and a source of ideas, Beverly Hills-based Stay Gold LLC is developing merchandise under the label 6126." The merch so far is "leggings." They're developing self-tanner. One can only assume really ratty wigs are on the drawing board. [WWD]
• Now that the industry is getting more diverse, Naomi Campbell's work here is done. “This time they [designers and editors] have stepped it up. I feel positive. That means that I can go soon.” Okay, Siddhartha, you do that. [Times of London]
• The guy who designed Sarah Palin's rimless specs is, in fact, voting for Change. [CNN]
• Which is kinda harsh, really, since his sales have quadrupled since the conventions! [NYDN]

• Apparently Nicole Farhi's moddles all sported Obama buttons on the runway "instead of brooches". Never mind that they're all probably under 18 and Russian! [Style.com]
• This is like Fashion mad libs! Rodarte and Lexus are making a scented candle. Yes. [MediaBistro]
• This new geriatric Sartorialist is like my dream come to life. No, really. 'Advanced Style' "documents street style and fashion of the mature and wizened. Our aim is to take photos of elders with a unique sense of personal style that has developed with age." [NY Mag]
• Have you heard?! Apparently nothing still comes between Brooke Shields and her Calvins! Certainly not carbs. [People]
• "Carolyn Rafaelian is just a small-business-owning single mom with three kids to raise, but the bigwigs at Juicy Couture don't care." They've apparently ripped off this bangle which she sells to Henri Bendel and Saks. Twirling their mustaches, one assumes. [New York Post]
• Even if the girls are too thin, the clothes are great on the new 90210. Wait, why am I saying that like it's an unusual conflict? [Variety]
• Michael Vollbracht swoops in to claim Bill Blass's society-ladies-of-a-certain-age clientele: The collection "was delightfully old-fashioned and completely oblivious to the financial meltdown happening somewhere downtown." [NY Times]
• The life of a "body part model" is a busy one. [Mirror]
• Apparently Viktor and Rolf require chocolates at all their awesome shows. Take off the last part, and they have a lot in common with us. [Dazed Digital]
• Well, fuck. Topshop NYC's not opening until the Spring. [FT]
• For those gals with a season pass on the SATC tour bus, good news: "Select pieces from Patricia Field's Destination Style New York collection can be pre-ordered online before her limited-run HSN line premieres on September 23 for five nights." [Extra]

• Sarah Silverman is going to be in ads for The Gap. What are the odds this genius plan was hatched in a corporate marketing meeting during which someone employed the term "edgy"? [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Menswear designer Thom Browne: Now bringing his shrunken jacket, cropped pant stylings to (lord help us) a womenswear line. Ugh. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• How cute! Readers of Seventeen and CosmoGIRL! can "connect" with the mags' advertisers through a special website! If only we could have developed a deep, personal, virtual relationship with J.C. Penney when we were in middle school! Jealous! [WWD, 3rd item]
  
• Hubert Givenchy? A little bitter! The retired designer says that "Fashion is over!" because the whole business now revolves around making giant, ugly handbags. Also bitter? One of our favorite fashion bitches, resigned Bill Blass designer Michael Vollbracht, who says, "When making big handbags is the only thing that will save your business, then designing clothes is finished!" [LizSmith]
  
• Diane von Furstenberg: Likes to hike! [Vogue UK]

I had an epiphany recently. I realized I am the old guard. I used to turn heads... I'll be 60 in November. For a gay man, that's a huge thing. We become trolls at 45.

I had someone come up to me and say, 'You do such beautiful clothes. Another woman patted my hand and said, 'Don't take that as a compliment.'

I didn't know the rules. You've got to be with the right stylist, the right models, the right mafia — when all it just comes down to is... clothes.

The stylist has more power than I do. [At Bill Blass] we're sending thousands of dollars in FedExes to Halle Berry and Catherine Zeta-Jones [only to have the clothes go unworn]. We're all sending this [stuff] out there. That's the thing I didn't understand, the power of the stylist.

I know I was disliked, but I have no bones to pick with the press. Though my youth is gone and my beauty is gone, my character remains intact.

Speaking of, we're almost late for our Friday afternoon goblet of bourbon. Join us for one sometime!

Taking Off From the Runway Business: For Blass Designer, the Industry Wore Thin [Washington Post]
Front Row: Goodbye to Blass [NYTimes]

• Model Twiggy says she now has two personas and will start tracking down and fining anyone who subjects either one of them to "overexposure" by publishing unauthorized photos of them. [Vogue UK]
  
• Once-iconic label Bill Blass [Remember the Bill Blass Barbie? Uh, we didn't either. -Ed.] has lost head Michael Volbracht. Details are still emerging, though it could have to do with the fact that Volbracht was a total bitch whose designs critics sorta found unspectacular. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• New Missoni CEO Massimo Gasparini is refocusing the brand by — REVOLUTIONARY BUSINESS MODEL ALERT! — discontinuing the crappy sportswear line that was diluting the brand and opening company stores to better control distribution. Meanwhile, actual Missoni heirs serve mostly as [Term we love alert! -Ed.] "brand ambassadors." [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• No one is buying clothes at Wal-Mart, which is bad news for the people of Zibo, China. [WSJ, sub req'd]

• Burberry starts selling really, really expensive bags to see where its customers' feelings about the brand fall on the "I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backback" spectrum. [Fashion Inc.]
• The Bennetton family is not as cool as they were when Dirty Dancing was in theaters: Brand vice-chairman Alessandri Bennetton was rejected from tony Milan good ol' boys club Clubino Dadi. [Telegraph]