Peter Lindbergh shot an entire editorial without recourse to that particular computer program, except for minor color-correction. Kristen McMenamy, Tatjana Patitz, Nadja Auermann, Claudia Schiffer, et. al., also posed without any hair products or makeup.

And they predictably look fantastic. Does this spread in any way address the constant barrage of unrealistically altered images of women in the fashion media? Only obliquely, at best. And the skincare peg  all the models are shilling their supposed favorite spas and products  is a little annoying. I worry sometimes that these non-Photoshopped editorials are becoming more of a stunt than a corrective; French Elle had one, also shot by Lindbergh, and even Life & Style ran a Photoshop-free cover, of Kim Kardashian. How awesome would it be for a fashion magazine to state, as a matter of editorial policy, that excessive and unrealistic retouching will never find a home in its pages? That adjusting the white balance in post-production is fine, but that rhinoplasty-by-liquify-tool and 80 gazillion layers of changes are not? That would be a magazine worth buying.

Which is not to say that it isn't still wonderful to see images of real women at a variety of ages, images that haven't been "fixed" beyond recognition, even if these spreads are annoyingly presented as the fashion equivalent of Very Special Episodes. Shalom Harlow, pictured here, has always been one of my favorite models, and shots like this prove she of all people doesn't need post-production smoothing and sculpting to look bewitchingly beautiful.

Karl Lagerfeld shot this editorial, notionally inspired by Peggy Guggenheim, in Venice with Lara Stone and his latest boytoy, Baptiste Giabiconi. (Baptiste gets to wear boy clothes in this one, amazingly: Lagerfeld has a habit of styling his favorite hot young thing in women's wear and heels.)

Lara often looks kind of severe and disapproving  Cathy Horyn once compared her to Lurch  but the Gugg-inspired blonde clown hair in this spread sure isn't helping her.

These sunglasses, which if you look closely you can see are the shape of a bat spreading its wings, belonged to La Dogaressa (real, and awesome, nickname) herself.

It wouldn't be fall without some kind of a generalist "New Shapes" spread. This one, shot by Camilla Akrans, stars Kendra Spears and Katie Fogarty, who are aged 20 and 17, respectively, and accompanies text by Suzy Menkes. Representative quote: "THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: It could be time to go green. Rethink jade."

Of course, Madonna's bunny ears get a shot.

It also wouldn't be fall without a long, studio-shot editorial of a model  Karmen Pedaru  jumping dazedly.

There is, however, a beautifully shot Glen Luchford editorial, starring the spooky Eniko Mihalik.

And Siri Tollerod turns up with Richard Burbridge to do one of those perennial accessories editorials where the fashion magazines try and convince their readers that even when it's fall and the mind turns to tweed, we will still somehow feel like wearing acid brights and neon and "pops of color."

Oh, look: Our old friend Jean-Paul "I have jungle fever" Goude. Styling Naomi Campbell in leopard print, racing a cheetah across the serengeti, really is daring and original.

Naomi rides an elephant. Like a real African Queen.

She jumps rope. With monkeys. Monkeys.

We all know that black models have been lamentably absent from mainstream fashion magazines and runways. But all that shoots like these do is draw offensive similarities between black women and wild animals, and reiterate, in pictures, the old colonialist assumption that black people are savage and uncivilizable. Naomi Campbell isn't from Tanzania, she's from Streatham; at what point does having a British woman wander around the African wilderness, performing truly awful received ideas of how African women behave, for a publication with a majority white audience, verge on minstrelsy? Having no black models represented in magazines is a problem. But is this kind of representation actually worse than being totally ignored?

Then, Naomi perched on the back of a crocodile  this shoot was obviously not Photoshop-free  while wearing a Dior haute couture crocodile jacket and pants.

Interestingly, the Jean-Paul Goude shoot is followed in the magazine by a 14-page Peter Lindbergh editorial starring Chanel Iman and Arlenis Sosa. The theme? The Harlem Renaissance. This shot of Chanel was taken just outside the iconic Lenox Lounge, on Lenox just south of 125th Street.

Chanel and Arlenis, who are photographed carrying trumpet cases and singing into old-fashioned microphones, make pretty great foxy jazz musician dames. And while the Harlem Renaissance is kind of a cliché  and the period doesn't really have much discernible connection with life in the Harlem of today  it's nice to see a period with a black cast mined for interest in a fashion magazine, rather than just another all-white editorial about the Summer of Love or Studio 54.

Besides, the setting is the perfect way to set off the 1940s looks so many designers have turned out for this coming fall.

Can anyone identify this block? I want to say it's one of those gorgeous brownstone streets south of Marcus Garvey Park, but it also could be Strivers' Row. Either way, it's gorgeous.

The commitment to period realism does falter slightly in places: Sylvia's restaurant was founded in 1962.

And if you look really closely in the magazine, you can see the Fairway supermarket, just under the elevated rail line. In all, though, it's a beautiful shoot.

I don't think I even want to investigate the subtext of Harper's Bazaar using a milk-pale blonde British model as a stand-in for a black American pop megastar; let's just reiterate that this spread, which was obviously thrown together at the last minute, unfolds like an uninspired afterthought. And also the clothes suck.

Jessica Stam and Benjamin Alexander Huseby pop in for an editorial all about gardening, and fall tweeds of the sort that Little Edie would have loved.

Nobody does sublime eccentricity like Stam.

And Magdalena Frackowiak has an editorial all about shopping, photographed by Terry Richardson. Seeing her play a ditzy society lady with more credit than sense would be funny, if the photos weren't desperately captioned things like "SHOP: SAVE JOBS!"

In an accompanying article, by Derek Blasberg, about the macroeconomic imperative of increasing consumer spending, Margherita Missoni says: "It was cool to talk about the recession  which I found extremely annoying. But it seems not that people are no longer embarrassed to have good things." Thank god that recession thing is so over! God, that was such a drag!

I will leave you with images from Harper's Bazaar's Sesame Street-themed shoot, which features models Sessilee Lopez and Tao Okamoto. It's Sesame Street's 40th anniversary this year, so the magazine sent designers down to where the air is sweet.

This shot of Oscar de la Renta with Oscar the Grouch might actually top Harper's Bazaar's awesome The Simpsons fashion spread. Maybe.

In an interview with Anthem magazine, stylist B. Akerlund (wife of Jonas)  who is Lady GaGa's "first official stylist," talks about the intricate, bizarre and, frankly, gorgeous ensembles created for "Paparazzi."

The beginning of the video shows Ms. GaGa in a torrid embrace with a man, who ends up manipulating, dominating and manhandling her  trying to make sure their kisses are snapped by a hidden photographer  and he eventually throws her over a balcony. After her fall, GaGa returns home in a stylish neckbrace and wheelchair. B. Akerlund explains:

Gaga called me and said she wanted to be in a wheel chair. She wanted me to design it and not the prop department. I took it upon myself to drive to East L.A. and exchange the wheels for some low rider ones. I ordered some Gucci fabric and handed it over to my genius friend/designer Michael Schmidt so he could embellish it with Swarovski crystals. Originally, we made a metal logo that read "Gaga" on the wheels, but she disliked the font and we ended up exchanging it for the Chanel logo.

Once out of the wheelchair, GaGa wears a metal corset and walks with crutches.

B Akerlund says:

This is a very famous Thierry Mugler robot that was my biggest dream for GaGa. We made it happen and it arrived in a huge metal box with padlocks on it-very exciting! It's not the most comfortable thing to wear and very cold on the body, but a true work of art. The crutches were custom-made by Michael Schmidt with Swarovski chain and punk studs.

While the image is reminiscent of some famous Helmut Newton photographs 

 especially the two above, from a 1995 Vogue spread titled "The Empowered Woman"  do they make some kind of statement? A critique on literal fashion victims? A comment on the idea that women draw strength from what they wear? Can a victim or survivor find solace in style?

Throughout the video, we see flashes  very quick scenes  of dead (murdered?) women. Is the abusive boyfriend to blame? Later in the video, GaGa is back with man who hurt her, and he's reading a magazine which proclaims her to be "the new it girl." As though her ordeal just made her more famous. But GaGa has a ringful of poison, which she slips into his drink. He promptly dies. In the media blitz which follows, a newspaper headline reads, "We Love Her Again."

Yes, it's just a video. But in a time when the public was privy to a photograph of Rihanna's battered face and intimate details of Britney's breakdowns, isn't it interesting to see the idea of a strong  yet hurt  woman? And what if the "man" in the video is actually a stand-in for fame itself, and what it does to women?

B. Akerlund [Anthem Magazine]
Lady Gaga - Paparazzi [You Tube]

• DVF's comic book, Be the Wonder Woman You Can Be, is here! The party sounds kinda crap, tho. "The green tome was stacked about the space, as were special DVF Wonder Woman tees and totes. Per the theme, bright red Wonder Woman cosmos completed the standard drink offerings of champagne, white wine and sparkling water. PR girls including Olivia Palermo and Whitney Port helped check off names at the door, and mingled with guests inside." [Racked]
• Oh, the woes of celebrity! LiLo was simply too famous to get into the Alexander Wang show. “I wanted to go to his show so bad, but his publicist said they weren’t allowing any celebrities to attend,” she said. “So I said, ‘Consider me a normal person then!’ But they wouldn’t.” [WWD]
• Screw the polls. What do the ties say? McCain's Windsor knot "screams old-guard Washington establishment, like a bolo screams cowboy." And Obama? 'He most often wears his necktie with a four-in-hand knot, an awkward and asymmetrical cinch invented by 19th-century carriage drivers (who held four reigns in hand) and popularized by Dilbert-types looking for a no-hassle way to spruce up for work. "It's a knot for someone who has 30 seconds for his tie in the morning...a knot for the masses.'" [Newsweek]

• In deference to our straitened circs, Vogue's gift guide is going low-end: nothing over $500. [New York Magazine]
• Wearing Thierry Mugler sounds horrible, actually. Reminisces model Nadja Auermann. "He liked to work with me because I could withstand the torture of some of his more extreme runway looks. We both thought the same way—if you wear a look, you go with it all the way. Once, I was in a gold robotic suit that I had to be sewn into, and I wore it for about half an hour, and I could feel my circulation was getting blocked. I walked in the show, and all I could think was, Oh, my hips are going numb! But I am nearly at the end of the runway; I can make it!" [Style.com]
• Charlotte, the designing Ronson, is the new face of Sebastien hair care. "Charlotte will represent Trilliant, a product that makes tresses stylish and manageable, while flaunting her I'm-so-downtown clothing as Nylon]
• Burberry sales mysteriously up. [FT]
• Wow they really make this People Tree ethical fashion book sound dreary: Browse our gallery of their latest looks, feeling safe in the knowledge that your fashion conscience is unsullied." [Guardian]
• H&M sales drop a bit. [WWD]
• 20-year-old Dior Homme model Randy Johnston dies; no cause given. [Fashionologie]
• Want to hear about an "eyebrow transplant" in exhaustive detail? No? Don't click on this link. [ElleUK]
• Louis Vuitton apparently shocked that that Gorbachev ad isn't popular in Russia. [AdAge]
• Avon tries to tempt more Avon Ladies into the game by offering incentives like gas money, "direct access to financial adviser Suze Orman." [WSJ]
• Remember Jack from Project Runway? (Yeah, he left pretty quickly.) He just made a wedding gown covered in condoms for this "Condom Couture" event. [Blogging Project Runway]
• Just what you've always wanted: how to get Oprah's look. No, no, we said "riches."[USA Today]
• The first high-end J. Crew "Collection" store "encourages mixing modern items with vintage pieces, uptown and downtown looks, and evening attire with a dose of the more casual in the same outfits." For a price, we're guessing. [WWD]
• Here's the new Patricia Field Marks and Spencer line. [Fashionista]
• Now along withersatz SATC threads, you can buy gas at M&S too. [VogueUK]
• Allen Schwartz on his Penney's line: “Today, what is exploding is the antifit look, the crop look, the boy jean, ruffle blouses and the new harem pant. It’s very baggy, very ‘I Dream of Jeannie.'" [FabSugar]