LaChapelle's "The Rape Of Africa" is the title piece from a recent exhibition the photographer held at a gallery in Amsterdam. This is the full Flaunt cover shot:

If it reminds you of a certain Botticelli painting, you aren't alone. As the Daily points out, the composition is a direct reference to the Florentine painter's 1483 work "Venus And Mars."

The original is actually a kind of touching portrait of male vulnerability, albeit one with somewhat trite overtones about love conquering war. Mars, the Roman god of war, has fallen asleep in a forest clearing, having removed all of his armor and laid down his weapons. Venus, the god of love, watches over him in a lavish gown, all the while allowing little satyrs to play with Mars' lance and helmet. One is about to whistle into Mars' ear with a shell that would have been used as a hunting horn. The mighty god of war lies supine, clad only in his underwear.

So what does it mean that LaChapelle recreated the scene with modern weaponry, Naomi Campbell, and threw in a reference to Africa? I personally find it discomfiting to see Africa personified by the bare-breasted Campbell in the context of a work called "The Rape Of Africa." But perhaps highlighting the unease of using rape as metaphor is the point. Is this more empty, self-consciously "controversial," candy-colored bombast from the photographer who once gave us the Courtney Love pièta, or is LaChapelle actually making some kind of statement about...something?

Flaunt Magazine [Official Site]
LaChapelle Studios [Official Site]
If You've Got It... [FWD]

• Gisele Bundchen has given birth to a baby boy. Husband Tom Brady has a two-year-old son with actress Bridget Moynihan. [People]
• A Chantilly lace LBD worn by Audrey Hepburn in How To Steal A Million sold for $97,000. [AP]

• Naomi Campbell might do a modeling reality show in the U.K. Then she and Tyra would really have something to fight about. "Naomi has been approached with an offer, which we are talking about and discussing," says her spokesperson, somewhat redundantly. [UK Vogue]
• Executives at Maison Martin Margiela have confirmed that the Belgian designer, famous for his closely guarded privacy and his avant-garde designs, has left the house he founded and later sold to Diesel. Margiela's presence or absence at the house had long been a subject of speculation, with most fashion commentators, including us, operating on the understanding that Margiela the person was gone, but this confirmation comes with a twist: Diesel will not be hiring anyone to take Margiela's place. (Haider Ackermann and Raf Simons had been mentioned as potential replacements.) The design work will continue to be spearheaded by the 28-strong creative team, saving the house the expense of a "name" creative director. Will this work? Fashion design is a collective effort — all designers rely heavily on their creative teams for the generation, not just the execution, of ideas — but fashion observers yearn for an identifiable individual (even one who is rarely seen in public) to pin their criticism on. [IHT]
• Yesterday morning, police executed raids on 30 businesses on Canal Street in Chinatown, long a hotbed of counterfeiting. The Cut snapped a photo of what a shop without its imitation Coach and Prada goods looks like: basically a particleboard shell with racks and cases. "It's time to take back the streets of New York," said a police officer. Could this be the start of a crackdown? [The Cut]
• The counterfeit goods seized, including perfumes and handbags, filled an entire trailer. The sting was the result of a month long investigation carried out by the police and a private firm called Counter Tech. Officers made controlled buys of the imitation goods, which bore the trademarks of companies like Cartier, Gucci, Tiffany, and Chanel, and then used those goods to obtain search warrants. Investigators noted that during the five weeks they observed Canal Street, there seemed to be more foot traffic in the stalls than ever before. [WWD]
• Apparently pointing out that Michelle Obama "is not the next Jackie O" is enough to count as evil, unthinkable "sniping." Designer Douglas Hannant allegedly said this perfectly reasonable thing — Michelle Obama and Jackie Kennedy-Onassis are different women who had different roles in public life even if they shared a position, and all the Obama/Kennedy comparisons are a tad trite — and people gasped. [P6]
• Vogue is doing a shoot with fashion bloggers. Somehow our invitation must have gotten lost in the post! There are allegedly seven bloggers involved, and only three of them have been named: Tommy Ton of Jak & Jil, BryanBoy, and Todd Selby of The Selby. Who are the others? Garance Doré recently mentioned losing weight thanks to Anna Wintour in New York, and Tavi Gevinson certainly merits inclusion. Seeing the women behind Refinery29 would also be great (although they were just in Elle). But how much do you wanna bet it'll just be Julia Frakes and Sea of Shoes again? [Fashionista]
• Speaking of Tavi: She plays a prominent role in this video about the Rodarte for Target collection. You won't spend a better 2:37 today than watching Tavi interview Elijah Wood and Jason Schwartzman at the Rodarte show, or seeing the Target ad shoot in surprisingly picturesque North Dakota. [Style.com]
• And Tavi is now writing for Harper's Bazaar. [WWD]
• Just what you needed for the holidays: A $3,000 Judith Leiber Hello Kitty clutch. [Racked]
• Tamara Mellon went out to the premiere of A Single Man after trouncing her mother, Ann Yeardre, in a legal battle. Mellon, the owner of Jimmy Choo, won a $10 million settlement against Yeardre after some Jimmy Choo shares were mistakenly transferred to Yeardre, and she refused to give them back. [P6]
• The spring Louis Vuitton campaign has leaked. Lara Stone's position, reclining on dark, mossy grass, with white doves and, duh, handbags, looks like a friendlier revision of editorials done by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, one earlier this year for Vogue and the other in 2007, for W. The ads were shot by Steven Meisel. [Blackbook]
• After auctioning off all his and Yves Saint Laurent's artworks and household goods, Pierre Bergé is putting their 5,400 square foot Paris apartment on the market. It has a garden roughly equal in size, and is expected to sell for around $30 million. [WWD]
• Curious about who the most powerful 25 people in British fashion are? Well now you can find out. Good to know the British Fashion Council's on top of this stuff. [Telegraph]
• Carolina Herrera is opening her first freestanding store on Madison Avenue. [WWD]

• Diane Kruger nabbed a L'Oréal contract. [Elle UK]
• And yes, Siriano provides the contractually-obligated fierceness. [Racked]

• Asked to nominated a 21st Century "heroine" by Harper's Bazaar magazine, Sarah Brown chose Naomi Campbell, for her work with women's charities. Brown calls the supermodel "impatient in a good way." [Guardian]
• Iman says David Bowie loves SoHo. "It's a perfect place for my husband," says the cosmetics company owner/legendary model. "Everyone's dressed better than he is, and they all think they're stars — so no one bothers him!" [TheMoment]
• The Stockholm department store that was set to carry NoKo jeans — the only jeans made in North Korea, by a trio of Swedish entrepreneurs who convinced the communist regime to allow production of its $215 jeans — decided at the last minute to back out. [AP]
• "Chanel in Shanghai: China goes from Mao to wow." No, that's the headline, really. [Telegraph]
• "Within East Africa, Kenyans are renowned for being the worst dressed." And, sadly, the photos accompanying this story are not helping. [BBC]
• Christopher Bailey, the Burberry creative director, went to Buckingham Palace to pick up his MBE for services to the fashion industry. [Elle UK]
• Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons — the label White House social secretary Desiree Rogers wore to the state dinner — has designed a limited edition Barbie dress. Comme des Garçons Barbie looks surprisingly normal, and costs £225. [DazedDigital]
• Christian Louboutin's Barbie, and her four not-sold-separately plastic Louboutin shoes, goes for a mere $150. That would be the Barbie Louboutin redesigned to eliminate her cankles. [People]
• Oh, look: Someone from the Daily Mail went to cover the Elite Model Look competition and forgot to Google Gérald Marie. [Daily Mail]
• Gucci is opening its third Indian store, in New Delhi, through a company the brand owns in partnership with two local entrepreneurs. Previous stores in India were franchises. [WWD]
• Vans and Robert Crumb are doing a collaboration. Two of Crumb's legendarily skeevy cartoon characters will adorn Vans sneakers, for $52-$60. [Independent]
• The Australian wool industry was supposed to end the practice of mulesing — amputating excess skin from lambs' hindquarters to prevent painful and life-threatening maggot infestations — by 2010. Having failed to do so, the Gap has bowed to PETA's pressure and announced it will stop sourcing wool from Australia. [PETA]
• Lord & Taylor has agreed to ban raccoon dog fur from its stores after the Humane Society filed a lawsuit against the company for mislabeling some fur garments. [WWD]
• Ksubi is in trouble over allegations of animal cruelty at one of its events in Sydney. Forty white homing pigeons were hired by the brand as live party props, and at least one died. [DailyTelegraph]
• What what what? Zappos is launching a printed catalog. Isn't that like going back in time? [NYTimes]
• Macy's will roughly triple the number of Sunglass Hut outposts in its department stores over the next year. [Crains]

• According to Radar Online, Tiger Woods has agreed to pay alleged mistress Rachel Uchitel "more than one million but less than three million" to keep her from sharing the details of their relationship with the public. [RadarOnline]

• Yet the reported payoff might not be enough to stop the embarrassing tabloid stories from popping up: a friend of Uchitel is now claiming that Woods had dreams about Uchitel with other famous men, writing such things as "I came home, excited to see you, and there you were in the bedroom getting f—ked by Derek and David [Boreanaz]. Some part of me thinks you would like that." [USWeekly]
• Meanwhile, a fourth alleged mistress of Woods, a VIP cocktail waitress who claims she had an affair with Woods back in 2004, has "lawyered up." [TMZ]
• Amy Adams and her fiance, Darren Legallo, have announced that they are expecting their first child. Congrats! [People]
• Naomi Campbell has hired a bodyguard to accompany her in Miami due to an "aggressive female stalker" who has given her trouble in the past. [PageSix]
• Rihanna hit up a NYC club on Thursday night and preferred to party with her girlfriends: "Rihanna was having a great time," says a source, "She danced until 4 a.m. in a skintight dress. She drank champagne and vodka. While every guy in the room wanted to get to her, she only stuck with her girlfriends. They even went to the bathroom together. She insisted on arriving and leaving through the back door — alone." [PageSix]
• ABC has apparently forgiven Adam Lambert: he's been booked to perform on The View December 10. [TMZ]
• "Brad and I have three magnificent children and we look forward to raising them. We say we are going to be a family that lives in two different houses. There are challenges, but I think it will be a good year."-Jane Kaczmarek on her divorce from Bradley Whitford [People]
• Helen Mirren says that though things have improved for women in Hollywood since she started out, there's still quite a ways to go: "It has not gone nearly far enough... I want to see more women behind the camera," she noted while picking up her Women In Film lifetime achievement award, "We have great women working in this industry. Let's celebrate them with this award." [Mirror]
• "Opening that center is one of my greatest achievements because it's something I've always wanted to do for other women. It's part of the charitable organization I co-founded with Steve Stoute in 2008, Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now. Our initiative is to educate, encourage and empower women. Yonkers is where I grew up and saw women destroyed, both physically and mentally. So this center is beautiful for me because maybe those women's children or their children's children can go there and get help. I'm hoping to see FFAWN and Mary J. Blige Centers all over the world. Outside of music, that's probably the one thing to which I will devote a lot of my time."- Mary J. Blige, on opening the Mary J. Blige Center for Women [Reuters]
• Miley Cyrus was turned away at an over-21 club on Wednesday night because she's well, not over 21. [TMZ]
• A truck carrying roughly 50-75 dresses for Victoria Beckham's new fashion line, worth approximately £350,000, was robbed last night at knife-point in London. "This operation was meticulously planned. The thieves must feel they can make a fortune selling the collection on the black market," says a source, "Victoria was informed straight away about the incident and was shocked and deeply saddened, although her first priority was the well-being of the driver." The dresses were eventually supposed to be delivered to Neiman-Marcus in New York City.[DailyMail]
• Morgan Freeman, who began taking flying lessons in 2002 and now has a pilot's license, is going to christen his new private jet with a trip around the world. [DailyExpress]
• Jake Gyllenhaal's mother, screenwriter Naomi Foner, would really like to see him play Danny Kaye in a film. "(We'd watch) Five Pennies, The Court Jester and Hans Christian Anderson," Gyllenhaal says, "My mother was a big Danny Kaye fan and would always play me these movies. She is, in fact, the person who always calls me up and is like, 'You should redo The Court Jester!'" [DailyExpress]
• Katie Holmes eats french fries, world apparently stops turning. [DailyMail]
• "To me it's strange that, you know, my sister calls me a weirdo. I love my sister, we get along, but I'm the weirdo? I'm the one that's weird? You buy a magazine with pictures of celebrities' children in them so you can read about children in magazines, and I'm the fucking weirdo?"-Zach Galifianakis [Guardian]
• Sienna Miller and Jude Law were spotted leaving Law's apartment minutes apart last night, which means they may be back together. Alternately, it means absolutely nothing. [DailyMail]
• "Elton lives on that. He will not be happy until I bang on his door in the middle of the night saying, 'Please, please, help me, Elton. Take me to rehab.' It's not going to happen. Elton just needs to shut his mouth and get on with his own life. Look, if people choose to believe that I'm sitting here in my ivory tower, Howard Hughesing myself with long fingernails and loads of drugs, then I can't do anything about that, can I? People want to see me as tragic with all the cottaging and drug-taking... those things are not what most people aspire to, and I think it removes people's envy to see your weaknesses. I don't even see them as weaknesses any more. It's just who I am."-George Michael, on his drug use. [DailyMail]
• Michael Keaton says he has two of his Batsuits from his days playing Batman for Tim Burton, but he's afraid they might be falling apart: "One is in storage. Sometimes I think, I know I'm going to go there and rats will have eaten it and I am going to go 'No!'. They are going to be worth a lot of money." [DailyExpress]
• "Yeah, we were mates. God, that was so cool. It was the saving grace. Because it got a bit sticky after the Beatles. No, we were really good mates again - it was lovely, actually."- Paul McCartney, on his relationship with John Lennon before Lennon's death. [TimesOnline]
• Nicolas Cage was presented with the U.N. Correspondents Association's Global Citizen of the Year award last night and named a UN Goodwill Ambassador in honor of his commitment to humanitarian work. [Yahoo]
• Jessica Simpson has "completely fallen" for Billy Corgan and wants to "take things a lot further." In related news, my brain has just melted all over my keyboard and my copy of Siamese Dream just spontaneously combusted in the corner of the room. [JustJared]

• Ian Halperin, who is pushing his book, Brangelina : The Untold Story, claims that Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston had a "heated confrontation" at a deserted Hollywood restaurant after Brad and Jen's 2006 divorce. Halperin says:

"Jen was upset and shouted at Angelina . . . There was an altercation, it got pretty heated . . . It reduced Jen to tears." Um, he also claims that before meeting Brad, Angelina was "interested" in other married men: "She said she wanted to go after either Bill Clinton or Johnny Depp." But for business reasons, no? Anyway: Grain of salt. [Page Six]

• Dumb/untrue headline of the day: "Only Brad Pitt And Angelina Jolie Would Take An Eight-Year-Old To See A Film About Nelson Mandela." [Daily Mail]
• Roman Polanski began his house arrest in an Alpine chalet in the luxury resort of Gstaad today. [AP]
• Miley Cyrus's tattoo allegedly says "Just Breathe," but the rumor that she got her boyfriend's name inked probably started since she dated a dude named Justin. Just, Justin. Just saying. [Daily Mail]
• Jude Law and Sienna Miller: So back on? Or just friends? [Page Six]
• "Sources" say that the reason Rachel Uchitel canceled her press conference about Tiger Woods is because Tiger gave her $1 million. [MSNBC]
• TMZ says Tiger didn't pay Rachel, but that she canceled her press conference because she was "scared for her safety" and fears"all the other people caught in what is becoming a very large net." What the hell does that mean? [TMZ]
• According to a report, Tiger Woods' mom and mother-in-law were at his house the night of the incident and came outside after the cops showed up, with Tiger's mom asking, "What happened?" [USA Today}
• "Sources say Bryon Bell, a childhood friend and President of Tiger Woods Design, bought a plane ticket for Rachel Uchitel to go to Australia in mid-November to secretly spend time with Tiger. The ticket was purchased by Bell using a credit card. He also booked a room for Uchitel at the Crown Towers Hotel in Melbourne." The trip, of course, was booked to coincide with the Australian Masters, which Tiger won. [TMZ]
• TMZ has emails between Byron Bell and Rachel Uchitel. [TMZ]
• Tiger Woods is allegedly offering his wife Elin $80 million to stay for seven years in a revised prenup. Worth it? [NY Daily News]
• Destiny's Child is reuniting — in court for a lawsuit over the song "Cater 2 U." A source says: "Matthew [Knowles] has a long history of trying to get songwriters to add Beyoncé's name to songs she didn't compose, just so she gets publishing royalties." Kelly Rowland is pissed, apparently, that she is even involved. [Gatecrasher]
• The usually conservatively dressed Taylor Swift wears a bikini in a new video clip. [NY Daily News]
• WTF headline of the day: "Kim Kardashian: I'm Back to My Ninth-Grade Weight." Next goal: 3rd grade! Then sexy as a fetus! [E!]
• This picture of some of the kids from Glee about to sing in Bryant Park = awesome. [Gatecrasher]
• Hollywood kids in love! Patrick Schwarzenegger is seeing Tallulah Willis. [Page Six]
• Naomi Campbell went to Art Basel in Miami and a source says: "She was pretty rude, didn't bid on anything, and spent the whole time clinging to her boyfriend. Who shows up to a charity event with a bodyguard?" Is she obligated to bid on anything? What if the bodyguard was for her wealthy Russian beau? This story reeks of sour grapes. [Page Six]
• Rihanna told some radio station DJs that she likes a tall guy with a big dick. Audio at the link. [TMZ]
• In an unrelated incident, Rihanna was the subject of a random search at LAX. [NY Post]
• The other Real Housewives of NYC don't like new housewife Sonja Morgan. "I had never watched the show before I joined, " she says. "If I had, I probably wouldn't be on it." [Gatecrasher]
• It's Britney's birthday! Celebrate with this "28 Years In 28 Pictures" column. [Pop Wrap]
• Busta Rhymes was fined $75,000 because a man claims he was assaulted by the rapper at a concert. [NY Post]
• Steve-O has been clean and sober and criminal violation-free for 18 months, earning him dismissal of a cocaine-possession charge. [E!]
• "There's 16 different licenses that I do; I do acting, music and TV. It's a lot of fun, so right now we're creating some different TV shows which I'm going to star in as well as produce and I'm just finishing up my new album." — Paris Hilton has a new perfume and a bunch of other projects and she is not going away. [Mirror]
• "It's hard for me. My wife passed away seven months ago and I don't want to think about the afterlife. I don't believe in that sort of thing. It'd be nice, if it were there. Woody Allen has that great quote where he says he doesn't believe in an afterlife, although he's bringing a change of underwear. That's how I feel." — Stanley Tucci, who plays a pedophile in The Lovely Bones, which deals with life after death, in a way. He shot Julie & Julia afterward, and says: "That film was the antidote to this one, and was exactly what I needed to do. I stayed at home, worked with Meryl, laughed a ton and made martinis every night. We're like two children together and laugh all the time, which is why we get along so well." [WSJ]
• "Of course, we feel like for us to put out an album titled Greatest Hits would maybe insinuate that we've got nothing left. I look at it as the end of Chapter 1—the first 15 years. I never thought we would last more than two albums. It wasn't meant to be a band. I would've called it something else if it were meant to be a band. Something other than Foo Fighters, I swear." — More great quotes from Dave Grohl at the link. [Time]
• "I'm getting my child a mortgage. She split time between New York and L.A. growing up, but she's a New Yorker. It's a house in the West Village, which is all she wants in life." — Courtney Love is giving Frances Bean property for Christmas. [Style.com]
• "There were a ton of paparazzi in the café with their huge cameras and laptops. I was like, 'Peter, oh my god, they are so into us. They're swarming us. We are so important.' It turns out Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were living on that street. It was the winter, so the photographers would go into the café to download their pictures."— earlier this year, Maggie Gyllenhaal thought she and Peter Sarsgaard were the toast of New York. [E!]
• "I feel the consequences of that every day. I was going to put the hose in the most noxious of the cars I own, a Jeep, take some sleeping pills and take a nice nap in the front seat of my car in the garage." — Alec Baldwin, on calling his daughter a "rude, thoughtless little pig" in a voicemail. [Daily Express via Men's Journal]
• "It's been amazing [to have twin daughters] but complicated because of my current work schedule, which I have enormous regrets about… One would prefer to be held 24 hours a day, and the other is already suffering from type A issues. It is the eternal conflict of every working woman. I've done this to myself. And I have a wonderful, wonderful nanny who allows me to be a working person. The great challenge for me is to be all things to all people; I want to be a great mother, and I want to feel good when I'm at work. But it is hard." — Sarah Jessica Parker regrets filming Sex And The City Part Deux. [NY Daily News via Glamour]

[Miami, December 2. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

• A French bankruptcy court has backed a plan that will cut 90% of Christian Lacroix's staff, and reduce the 22-year-old house to a licensing operation. [ToL]
• None other than Simon Doonan is decorating the White House for Christmas. [NYTimes]

• Speaking of the Obamas: Naeem Khan made not one but five dresses for Michelle Obama to consider for the state dinner last week. "It took 10 people three weeks to make the embroidery," says the Indian-born designer. The dresses were made in America, but the beading came from India. [W]
• The point of this story seems to be: Rihanna has changed her style remarkably since she started entertaining us with song. [CNN]
• Tiger Woods may still be wanted for questioning by the Florida Highway Patrol, but Nike is emphatically standing by their $40-million star. [WWD]
• Kate Hudson loved the costumes in her movie Nine, set in 1960s Italy like its progenitor, 8 1/2, because the period fabulousness reminded her of watching her mother get dressed as a little girl. [UPI]
• Catherine McNeil's Australian Vogue comeback cover is out. [Models.com]
• Hey, everyone! This week is the week that all the major department stores expect to magically start reducing their prices as one! To a modest 30-40% off. (Just don't call it collusion!) Net-A-Porter went 30-50% off yesterday, so that $4,000 dress might now be $2,500, with tax, and Saks is starting its up to 40% off sale Thursday; hold on till after Christmas for steeper cuts. Stores laid in around 20% less stock than last year, in hopes of avoiding last fall's rash of below-cost markdowns. It appears they've been successful. [WWD]
• "Whoever your mom is, people won't give you hundreds of thousands of dollars," says Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, who was given $50,000 to mount his first art exhibition last February, and whose latest show, of Nicolas Pol's work, drew Jean-Paul Gaultier, Andre Balazs, Daphne Guinness, and, oh yeah, his mother Carine Roitfeld, to its opening. Young Vlad's secret? "We work extremely hard." [Bloomberg]
• For I-D's 30th anniversary spring issue, Nick Knight will photograph 100 portraits of different fashion stars featured in its pages over the years — live, in front of an audience. His studio will be open to the public as an exhibition until December 20, and people will be able to watch shoots with, say, Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell, through a two-way mirror. Or live on the Internet, at Knight's showstudio.com. There's nothing that strikes us as less tedious than watching a month-long editorial fashion shoot, but someone might be into it. [WWD]
• The Telegraph gets to the bottom of the mysteriously straight and non-neurotic fashion designer Giles Deacon. How come he's so successful, anyway? "Don't know. My parents weren't into fashion. I didn't have an eccentric granny who mixed lace mantillas with tweed. I never believe people who say that, anyway. 'Oh, my granny had great style.' I just like doing it and I enjoy working hard. I go to work at 10am and I'm still there at 8.30pm. We get the wine out then, but anyone who is successful and tells you they don't work hard is lying." [Telegraph]
• Olivier Theyskens has a book on the way! Olivier Theyskens: The Other Side Of The Picture is due out from Assouline in February. He also might be involved in a new "retail concept," but neither he nor the company involved would comment. [WWD]
• It's official: Bravo will begin airing the Kelly Cutrone reality television series we've all been waiting for, Kell On Earth, next February. As long as Ms. Cutrone keeps dropping f-bombs on live morning television, an audience for this shit is practically guaranteed. [UPI]
• Peaches Geldof, Photoshopped within an inch of her life, is in a second campaign for the UK underwear brand Ultimo. The dividends of just happening upon that News Of The World photographer starkers continue to accrue. [Telegraph]
• North Korean jeans made by a trio of Swedes who describe making contact with the communist regime as "like Facebook poking a country"? Is this a joke? [FWD]
• Inez and Vinoodh shot the spring Lanvin men's wear ads this weekend in Paris, and rumor is they totally pulled a Juergen and put themselves in the shot. [WWD]

[MIlan, November 23. Image via x17.]

Steiner argues that even "free range" chickens may lead miserable lives, and that the only truly moral response to widespread cruelty to animals is "to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds." But, he writes,

You just haven't lived until you've tried to function as a strict vegan in a meat-crazed society. [...] To be a really strict vegan is to strive to avoid all animal products, and this includes materials like leather, silk and wool, as well as a panoply of cosmetics and medications. The more you dig, the more you learn about products you would never stop to think might contain or involve animal products in their production - like wine and beer (isinglass, a kind of gelatin derived from fish bladders, is often used to "fine," or purify, these beverages), refined sugar (bone char is sometimes used to bleach it) or Band-Aids (animal products in the adhesive). Just last week I was told that those little comfort strips on most razor blades contain animal fat.

In his expression of how difficult it is to lead a truly ethical life, he has an unlikely companion: designer Todd Lynn, who has used fur in his collections. Lynn says,

I don't have a problem with people following their principles, but what bugs me is when people pick and choose. People are really misinformed about the products they wear. Nobody argues with the pesticides used on cotton plants that will kill wildlife. To think that silk or cotton doesn't do damage to the environment is a lie.

The difference between the two men is that Steiner views the sheer difficulty of a vegan lifestyle as a problem with society, while Lynn seems to be excusing fur on the grounds that other products are just as bad. But both underscore the fact that if you want to be a truly ethical consumer, it's extremely difficult to live in the modern world. It's an argument I used to hear all the time when I was a strict vegetarian — that soy cultivation was just as toxic to the environment as livestock, and that if I really wanted to be consistent I would have to eat only unprocessed, unpackaged, organically grown foods. Of course, this argument conflates environmental degradation with morality — if what you really care about is animal welfare, then it doesn't really matter if soy farms use a lot of petroleum. On the other hand, it's absolutely true that if you want your eating and buying habits to be both morally correct and healthy for the planet, your life will be very, very hard.

There are a number of possible solutions to this problem. One is to throw up your hands and not worry about ethics, which The Observer's Elizabeth Day, who interviewed Lynn, says more people are now doing with respect to fur. She points out that former PETA supporter Naomi Campbell now stars in an ad campaign for a furrier. And she quotes a spokesman for a fur trading group who says,

Fur has never been more popular. From 1998 to 2008 there has been year-on-year growth in global sales for fur. People now are more comfortable showing their love of fur.

Given the economic climate, though, fur-love may not be the biggest obstacle to ethical consumption. Rather, many of us may be too cash-strapped and stressed out to consider the larger implications of what we're buying, eating, and wearing. Steiner's solution to the difficulty of living morally — sucking it up, potentially losing friends, and making your life a rebuke to a system that thoughtlessly exploits animals and the earth — is the most ideologically consistent one. But it's also the most difficult one to sell to people who already have a lot of problems. We may need voices like Steiner's to remind us of the problems of consumption, but when it comes to advice for living, we might require a softer touch.

The question of whether radicalism or moderation is better at effecting social change is an age-old one. But in the case of our personal habits, swift, radical change on a large scale may be an unachievable goal. Steiner seems to disdain a dining companion who says, "I'm really a vegetarian - I don't eat red meat at home." This position can be annoying for vegetarians, as it leads them to be served chicken at dinner parties or pressured to eat "just a little" meat. At the same time, people who give up red meat do reduce their carbon footprints, as do people who avoid all meat one or two days a week. For those who believe meat is murder, giving it up sometimes probably doesn't seem like much of a compromise. But people who do so have given some thought to their consumption practices, and may be open to more. They may be the early adopters of a system which, while not perfect, cares more about animal welfare and environmental conservation than the old one that put animal fat in razors. Strict vegans might do well to treat these occasional vegetarians not as enemies, but as allies.

Animal, Vegetable, Miserable [NYT]
Would You Rather Go Naked? Not Any Longer [Observer]

• Kate Moss says her motto is, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." [WWD]

• In December Harper's Bazaar, Victoria Beckham reveals that she is itching to dress Emma Watson. [People]
• Alexander Wang is now 100,000 Euros richer, thanks to the Swiss Textiles Award. [WWD]
• Bridget Moynahan is becoming a face of Garnier Nutritioniste skincare. [WWD]
• It took a while, but someone finally got around to identifying what Sasha and Malia wore in the official White House family portrait, and putting together a press release. (Turns out it was French children's label Dino e Lucia.) [WWD]
• Miss J, on fun times with André Leon Talley: "I was working for Lars Nilsson at Bill Blass and André Leon Talley came over to the studio with Elizabeth Taylor's epic movie Boom!, which Karl Lagerfeld did the costuming for. We got down on some fried chicken, corn bread and popcorn shrimp and were in fits of hysterics well into the night. We went from working with models who don't eat all day to watching all of us get down on some soul food!" Says Miss J, "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but fabulous gets you most places." [The Moment]
• Naomi Campbell held a Fashion For Relief runway show to raise money for maternal health in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. (Previous stops have included Mumbai and New York, and have raised $1 million in aid for Hurricane Katrina and the Mumbai terrorist attacks.) Campbell walked the runway for the first time in the continent of Africa, and talked about the importance of diversity in fashion. "There's definitely space [for more black models] but has there been enough effort? It was getting better but it's slipped back this year," said the model. "The world is not made up of blonde hair and blue eyes. We need to share ourselves." [Reuters]
• Claudia Schiffer wouldn't rule out starting a clothing line. "I would consider it but it would have to be the right thing. They would need to be clothes that I would want to wear." [Telegraph]
• Liu Wen will be the first Asian model to walk in the Victoria's Secret fashion show. [Modelinia]
• Marc Jacobs' fiancé, Lorenzo Martone, and Ryan Brown, formerly of Elite, are starting a talent PR agency for models together called ARC NY. Lydia Hearst has signed on. [P6]
• Mango might ink a distribution deal with a U.S. department store, like JC Penney, Macy's, Bloomingdales or Saks, to help its retail expansion. [WWD]
• What other fashion house has ever inspired poetry upon its demise?
  "Luella, we will miss
  The frills
  The spills
  But know this

  Your work will live on
  In a sample sale shirt
  I once purchased
  Cheap as chips." [Guardian]

• As one exits, another enters: Biba is being revived. Again. [Catwalk Queen]
• Jimmy Choo has opened a Chinese restaurant in London. [Elle UK]
• For $8,500, you could own a sofa in the shape of the Chanel logo. [FWD]
• Bamboo fabric, though made from a plant that can be grown without pesticides and fertilizers, is processed with toxic solvents, just like rayon and viscose are made from wood. Eco-friendly it is not. [WSJ]
• Nordstrom's revenues for the third quarter jumped 17% on last year's results, but the company missed its earnings forecast by one cent, which sent the share price tumbling. [TS]
• Abercrombie & Fitch's quarterly profit fell to $38.8 million, from $63.9 million a year ago. [Reuters]
• Sales of department store fragrances fell by 11% on last year during the first three quarters, to $1.38 billion. [WWD]
• That hasn't stopped Gwen Stefani and her perfume partners, Coty, from putting out five new Harajuku Lovers fragrances. [WWD]

The course, being taught next spring by Professor Wendy Belcher, is offered through the Comparative Literature and African-American Studies departments. Its full title is "Model Memoirs: The Life Stories of International Fashion Models." And yes, there will be in-class visits:

Explores the life-writing of American, African, and Asian women in the fashion industry as a launching point for thinking about race, gender, and class. How do ethnicity and femininity intersect? How are authenticity and difference commodified? How do women construct identities through narrative and negotiate their relationships to their bodies, families, and nations? This course will include guest lectures by fashion editors and models; discussions of contemporary television programs, global fashion, and cultural studies; and student self-narratives about their relationships with cultural standards of beauty, whether vexed or not.

How much I would pay to be a fly on the wall the day the class asks Vogue's Candy Pratts Price how she commodifies authenticity and difference.

Far be it from windbag me to suggest that modeling is lacking in meat for young people's intellectual delectation. (Besides, it's my limited experience of these things that the professors behind the fluffiest-sounding courses team the material with theory from from only the most punishing and willfully obtuse of the French deconstructionists. Either that or my Advanced Topics In Popular Culture: "Breakin' II, Electric Boogaloo" course was just totally hard.) But I can't help but notice that Prof. Belcher hasn't yet fleshed out her reading list. It includes a mere three items: Alek Wek's memoir, Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel, Irina Pantaeva's Siberian Dream, and Jillian Shanebrook's Model: Life Behind the Makeup. Clearly this needs some work.

Given my (onetime) profession and my (eternal) predilection for reading, I have kind of a Thing for books written by models. Often, they're unintentionally hilarious — even before Naomi Campbell came out and admitted she had writer Caroline Upcher to thank for her novel Swan, did anyone actually believe she'd written it? Others can be strangely affecting: Susan Moncur's They Still Shoot Models My Age is awesomely written, if kind of insane. (Among other things, it taught me that notorious gaping asshole photographer David Bailey called his models "ratface.") Shoot is now out of print, but there's no reason the Comp Lit whippersnappers couldn't scour Amazon for second-hand copies. I'd put Crystal Renn's recently released memoir, Hungry — written with Marjorie Ingall — on the list, too. If Belcher is interested in models as women who are permitted, by virtue of their physical aspect, to move frictionlessly across cultures and classes, you could do worse than to consider the experience of a 14-year-old girl from small-town Mississippi thrust into the Manhattan fashion industry.

I have not read Cheryl Diamond's Model: A Memoir, but other sources have said it accurately portrays the realities of modeling. For something with pep and honesty and humor, assign Elyse Sewell's LiveJournal. And definitely make 'em read Waris Dirie's Desert Flower. If they can handle the genital mutilation.

If it were up to me, I'd have the students read all of the above, and then watch Sara Ziff and Ole Schell's documentary, Picture Me. And Frederick Wiseman's Model.

And then, we'd all eat cupcakes and never look at fashion magazines or catalogs or billboards or JC Penney's fliers the same way again.

Image via British Vogue

Princeton's Next Top Model (Class) [The Ink]
Course Details For Model Memoirs: The Life Stories of International Fashion Models [Princeton Registrar]

• Madonna is in Brazil, but not to meet Jesus' parents. She says:

"I am going there strictly for fund raising and humanitarian purposes." Her Madgesty is sponsoring a documentary about kids living in the squalid hillside slums. [Page Six]

• Guess who was seeing Heath Ledger when he died? Lindsay Lohan. Her mom, Dina, tells Michael Lohan about it in this — you guessed it — recorded phone conversation. In the audio, Dina says Lindsay "cannot be alone" and sleeps with Dina when she is home because she has fears of being alone. [Radar Online]
• In a newly released 2008 taped phone call between Lindsay Lohan's assistant, Jenni Muro, and Michael Lohan, the former says: "I am trying to save your daughter's life every day." Muro was also pissed she had to relocate to NYC so LL could be on Ugly Betty, saying: "I get a 5% commission on this entire TV show and it's sick and disgusting and I'm here and I give up my boyfriend and my dog and my parents and my new place in LA and everything so that your daughter doesn't kill herself, ok?" [ONTD via Radar]
• A recent Tweet from Lindsay Lohan: "i'm a regular person to.. i sleep, eat, laugh, cry, shower, have blood running through my veins, i have a heart, etc etc- lol" [Twitter]
• People: I have seen a clip of Lady Gaga's new video, "Bad Romance," and there is latex and implied violence and dancing! The full video debuts Monday, and Ms. Gaga says: "There's this one shot in the video where I get kidnapped by supermodels. I'm washing away my sins and they shove vodka down my throat to drug me up before they sell me off to the Russian mafia." In addition, Gaga wears razor-blade sunglasses: "I wanted to design a pair for some of the toughest chicks and some of my girlfriends - don't do this at home! - they used to keep razor blades in the side of their mouths. That tough female spirit is something that I want to project. It's meant to be, 'This is my shield, this is my weapon, this is my inner sense of fame, this is my monster.'" [MTV News]
• Amy Winehouse loves her new boobs and now wants butt implants to get that "pin-up look." [The Sun]
• Joe Halderman — the CBS news producer accused of trying to extort cash from David Letterman — goes to court today for the first hearing in his criminal case. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Joe Halderman's friends are helping him pay his legal bills. [TMZ]
• Justin Timberlake has been dealing with a stalker, and submitted a statement to a judge yesterday which read: "I fear for my personal safety." He called the behavior of woman in question "ever-increasing, aggressive and harassing." [TMZ]
• At the link, James Franco talks about his upcoming stints on 30 Rock and General Hospital. Of doing a soap opera, he says: "It's been a blast so far. It was kind of mind-blowing. I've worked one day on it. It's one day of a few. But I think we packed seven episodes of my material in." He also reveals that he has not worn an eyepatch. Yet. [NY Magazine]
• Oh dear: Tracy Morgan's stand-up show at Carnegie Hall was so crazy, people walked out. And not crazy in the good way — he called homosexuality a choice and joked, "Obama is really changing the White House, because he and Michelle will have the first presidential sex tape out." [Gatecrasher]
• "Dr. Conrad Murray was on the phone with his girlfriend as Michael Jackson was dying." [TMZ]
• Joe Jackson is being meddlesome with the executors of Michael Jackson's will. [CNN]
• Naomi Campbell is going on a month-long, £1 million vacation with boyfriend Vladislav Doronin, and she is calling it a honeymoon, though they're not married. Grain of salt on this one. [The Sun]
• Levi Johnston has Tweeted: "BREAKING NEWS !!!! SNL APPEARANCE THIS SAT… you hear it first !!!" My guess is that he'll be in the news segment, but you never know — we could get a Tina Fey/Sarah Palin appearance! [MSNBC Scoop]
• Levi Johnston is reportedly going to file for joint custody of his son Tripp. [Page Six]
• Ugh. Carrie Prejean's autobiography is out so she is still in the damn spotlight. She claims the Miss California USA pageant director pressured her into getting a boob job. [Radar Online]
• By the by, Carrie Prejean says her "solo sex tape" was the biggest mistake of her life. [TMZ]
• Director Lee Daniels is not pushing for an Oscar for Precious: "It scares me," he says. When he first heard Oscar talk, "I was completely thrown off guard. I was like … Oscar who? Oscar de la Renta?" [Gatecrasher]
• "Actress Emma Thompson's art project takes viewers on 'Journey' of sex slave" [NY Daily News]
• John Travolta has to promote his new flick Old Dogs, even though he is struggling to get by since the death of his son. He says: "
  "We've been working very hard every day as a family to heal. We have our own way of doing it, and it has been helping." [USA Today]
• Congrats to Halle Berry, who will receive the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter's 18th annual Women in Entertainment breakfast presented by Lifetime. Past recipients include Barbara Walters, Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster and Glenn Close. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Entourage's Kevin Connolly gambles and hangs with Playmates. [Page Six]
• Donald Trump and Omarosa will be reunited for Omarosa's new dating reality show on TV One, called Omarosa's Ultimate Merger, on which she tries to choose a love interest from a selection of 12 bachelors. [Variety]
• Boo: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. [People]
• "The only thing worse than Aerosmith with Steven Tyler is Aerosmith without Steven Tyler." [NY Post]
• Hot hottie Jason Lewis — you know, he played hottie Smith Jerrod — has been cast as the lead in a new show called Rio! He'll play an international detective (?!?!) who goes to Brazil to investigate a crime… and decides to stay after enjoying the city, its beaches and nightlife. It's Miami Vice and Magnum PI and maybe even Hawaii 5-0. Also, he's hot. [Page Six]
• Someone spilled a drink on Russell Simmons at a party. [Page Six]
• Twilight's Christian Serratos is getting naked for a PETA ad. She's 19. [Gatecrasher]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Kelly Kapowski is pregnant. [Gatecrasher]
• Whatshisname sued a tabloid magazine and won libel damages. [BBC News]
• "When you hear the phrase 'only in America,' it means something extraordinary, something extreme, something good. But if someone were to say ‘only in Britain,' it would be something damp, miserable, no, not until Wednesday and then it's unlikely." — Stephen Fry is promoting Stephen Fry In America and might come live in the U.S. [Daily Express]
• "If he wanted to go down that road he probably would have done so by now. And I think he is a very solid and faithful person." — Mel Gibson's girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, who has dated Mel and given birth while he's still legally married to his wife of 29 years. [MSNBC]
• "There wasn't going to be any more Juliet, and now there is going to be more Juliet. That's all I can say. I wish I could say more. I don't really like to be so close-lipped, but it kind of just goes with the show." — Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell. [USA Today]
• "How do I still look good? I owe 30 per cent to genes, 30 per cent to good sex, 30 per cent because of sports and healthy lifestyle with proper nutrition and for the remaining 10 per cent – I have to thank my plastic surgeon. I'm 71 and physically don't feel so good since I'm in pain. But I'm happier, the sex is better and I understand life better. I don't want to be young again." — Jane Fonda just had spine surgery, a new knee and hip made of titanium, but she had to get herself repaired because she wants to climb the Himalayas. [Telegraph]
• "I smoke weed, but I don't think it's really a drug. 'It's more of a herb. I don't regret saying that at all. I think everyone smokes weed and people who say they don't are lying! Weed has been given this evil stamp, but how is it dangerous? It's going to make you laugh your arse off? You might go to sleep? I think alcohol is much more harmful. People beat the f**k out of each other on alcohol." — Joss Stone should change her name to Joss Stoned. [Daily Mail]
• "I really enjoy acting. I like being in front of the camera. I think I should be an action star." — Serena Williams, that makes two of us. [NY Daily News]
• "Elevators scare me — just being stuck without phone service when you're alone. Small spaces are fine, if I'm with someone in an elevator fine, but I will not buy an apartment on the 14th floor of a building that's for sure, I've gotta be able to walk. … The unknown is very scary. …I'm scared of a lot of women, certain women because I guess I don't have a lot of confidence in myself, I don't know what it is." — Amanda Seyfried. [Mirror]
• "We're discovering who the enemy are, and I do think we do have an enemy. It means that everyone's got to go on fighting. And in what way you fight, well, it depends who you are… You can write a letter, you can talk about it to your congressperson… you can talk to people in bars… Or you can go on marches, or you can go and break windows." — Sir Ian McKellan on the fight for gay marriage. [Page Six]

• Pictures of the new Kate Moss Topshop collection are out — and they prominently display the supermodel's breasts, which she just recently up and grew, like she's some kind of experimental woman built by science, or something. [Telegraph]

• Seeing the Alexander McQueen runway shoes side-by-side with a normal 4.5" pair of stilettos, it becomes apparent just how otherworldly those 12"-tall creatures really are. We still want to a cross-sectional view, because we're having a hard time imagining where the feet go once they're inside. [UK Vogue]
• Marc Ecko sold a controlling 51% share of his brand to Iconix. Just last month, he told a reporter on the record that he would never give up control of the trademark he'd spent 16 years building. [NYPost]
• Roberto Cavalli was dining with a tableful of models at Serafina, an Italian joint, when he was overcome by the desire for Mexican food. So he ordered in from the place next door. Vittorio Assaf, who happens to own both the restaurants, says, "Roberto loves his guacamole. Sometimes he comes in alone in the afternoon to sit in the back and order it. At Serafina we let him have the Mexican food delivered, but we don't tell our chef — he would walk out." Letting him know by reading it all over the Internet is surely the kinder move. You should recommend it to HR! [The Cut]
• Meanwhile, fellow Italian designer Giorgio Armani, who earlier this year battled hepatitis, is mulling succession. "I'm already organizing staff who will continue my work," he said in Moscow. "Of course I am not eternal, there comes a time when you must hand it over." Perhaps he'll take that Senator For Life gig in his twilight years? [Reuters]
• Finally, an explanation of the Olsenboye brand-name: it is, apparently, the Olsens' ancestral Norwegian surname. [NYPost]
• Cindy Crawford says it: "I would not have become a supermodel in 2009. I look too healthy." She told a German magazine called Bunte, bodies "with big breasts, normal thighs and toned upper arms" do not currently interest the industry. [Telegraph]
• Dutch Elle, in truly groundbreaking territory, ran a cover featuring a naked model. Can you imagine! Her name is Lonneke Engel. [IMG]
• Yves Saint Laurent has been named, by Forbes (who else?) the top-earning dead celebrity. [Reuters]
• Tamara Mellon's Jimmy Choo is launching a limited edition accessories collection. Part of the proceeds will go to the Elton John AIDS foundation to fund post-exposure prophylaxis drugs for rape victims in Cape Town, since taking the drugs within 72 hours can reduce the rates of HIV transmission by up to 79%. Mellon has worked with Sir Elton John before, and traveled to see the medical center in Cape Town, where she met victims of rape and incest. "One woman at the Simelela centre was sexually abused by a male relation from the age of 13," says Mellon. "She told me how the centre had given her the strength to get her life back. These women are dealing with AIDS, they are dealing with rape, they are dealing with incest. But it really hits you when you see where the money [we've raised] has gone. It's real, it's in front of you and it's a success. It's given me great hope." [Telegraph]
• Ivanka Trump's wedding dress, by Vera Wang, consisted of three different layers of lace — including Lyon and Chantilly — and took about a month to make. It was partly based on Grace Kelly's marital attire. It also was not strapless — something Cathy Horyn says, "made a fresh statement." [On The Runway]
• Thierry Mugler is looking to re-launch itself as a brand, with designer Rosemary Rodriguez at the helm. Although the collection is being shown at Moscow's fashion week this season, rumors are flying that the next step will be Paris. [FWD]
• Sarah Mower is looking back on the spring 2010 collections and seeing women designers on top of their game, from Rodarte to Phoebe Philo to Isabel Marant. [Telegraph]
• Joe Zee wants your boyfriend. For a makeover! He says, on Facebook, "Do you have a style-challenged boyfriend, husband or brother? Is that guy in your life screaming "untapped potential"? Is his hair more Don King than Don Juan? Then I want to make him over for my column. Let me give him my A to Zee treatment. Email me a picture of yourself with this fashion-clueless guy to AtoZee@hfmus.com by Nov 2nd." [Facebook]
• Trouble already for Naomi Campbell's new perfume deal — a fragrance partner with whom the supermodel inked a deal in 1998 is suing her for breach of contract. [NYPost]
• H&M, which already has 169 stores in the United States, would like to expand — especially in the South, where it is under-represented. [WWD]
• Jones Apparel Group is reporting an 11% year-on-year increase in third-quarterly profit, to just over $30 million. Jones owns Nine West and Jones New York. [TS]
• Versace, which recently shut its Japanese stores after nearly 20 years in the market, is now cutting 350 jobs. [WSJ]

• Miuccia Prada: "I'm working on [a men's collection] right now and someone at the office worriedly asked me, ‘You're not going to make short skirts again, are you?' So I'm now pushing it even further, just for revenge!" [BlackBook]

• Leigh Lezark, on diversity: "I'm glad that a lot of kids — even now with the magazines that have come out — have something different to look up to. Not a tall, five-foot-ten blonde model, whatever...They can also look up to some faggots and a girl. I think it's great, because I wish I'd had that, and I never did." [The Cut]
• Reports that Hills villain Heidi Montag was launching a perfume with the Home Shopping Network have been denied by the network. HSN — which has recently announced deals with Naeem Khan and Badgley Mischka — was thought to be seeking a more exclusive audience, and the collaboration did seem a tad odd in that light. Now we'll never find out who would choose to smell like silicone, self tanner, and Spencer! [The Cut]
• In other fragrant news, Jude Law is the new face of Dior's men's scent, Sport. [Telegraph]
• Yesterday, to promote their new line for JC Penney, the Olsens — and the Olsens' JC Penney branded cupcake truck — went to Union Square. Although no cupcakes were in evidence, onlookers could browse the Olsenboye debut line, and even buy things for $10. (Racked says the clothes are more High School Musical than Elizabeth & James.) Today, should you be curious and New York-bound, the truck will be in Herald Square, and tomorrow, in Washington Square Park. [Racked]
• Kate Moss is happy with that Topshop line and those million-dollar cosmetics contracts, sure, but when it comes down to it, you know, she's just a mum. Reports the Guardian: " 'If I can keep people interested in my work for another few years I'll be happy. But the thing I'm always most proud of is my daughter. She's seven now, and vice captain of her class! My goodness!' Moss opens her mascara-ed eyes as wide as they'll go. 'I've never been vice captain of anything! She wants to be a chef, and her imaginary husband is a chef too. I was mother of the bride at their imaginary wedding, standing on the side holding her imaginary baby.' " [Guardian]
• Naomi Campbell told a charity event that the situation facing models of color is an "injustice." Said the supermodel, "Nelson Mandela always told me to speak my mind and the consequences will take care of themselves...There is a small group of people whose minds we have to change because we are living in a multicultural society." Maybe there are a few things Campbell could do — or not do — too. [WWD]
• Thakoon Panichgul, who was raised in Omaha, says he always wanted to be in fashion, but that his seamstress mother and grandmother didn't see how he could make a career out of something they understood as just "work." Luckily for Michelle Obama, he started going to Parsons at night, after completing business school. [Fashionista]
• Sonia Rykiel's lingerie collection for H&M will be launched with a party at the Grand Palais, where Chanel typically holds its shows. The line will be released in 1,500 H&M stores worldwide on December 5. [WWD]
• Cindy Crawford says she has no plans to make a return to the catwalk. "I don't want to stand next to a 20-year-old on the runway, even if people say you can still do it. It is like, 'Why would I do that to myself?' It would just make me depressed," said the supermodel. "I'm more comfortable with myself in the sense that hey, this is who I am now...I guess I appreciate my body for other things — like I was able to give birth to two kids. ... But at the same time, I am aware my body doesn't look the same way it did when I was 23. I actually don't want to feel that pressure." [Stylelist]
• Sarah Murdoch, a model married to media heir Lachlan Murdoch, appeared on the cover of an Australian tabloid without retouching. She has wrinkles and looks amazing. [News.com.au]
• The Escada sale certainly is shrouded in mystery. The bankrupt German house is understood to be entertaining unbinding offers from six would-be buyers, but nobody is prepared to own up to being one. One person from the company that owns Italy's La Rinescente and France's Printemps department stores spoke on the record, but denied acting in anything more than an advisory role. He declined to say whom he was advising. A deal is expected in early November. [WWD]
• Topshop, buoyed by the successful opening of its New York store, wants to open stores in Paris and Milan. And China. [Telegraph]
• The Limited's pop-up store in SoHo has been so popular with Manhattanites that the company has extended its lease — till December 28. [WWD]
• Company-wide, The Limited — which also owns Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret — has adjusted its forecast for the quarter. Although it says October same-store sales are going to be worse than they had originally predicted, the company still thinks it may break even. [Reuters]
• Marc Ecko, whose troubled and indebted company has been closing stores, is said to be considering selling to or partnering with Iconix. Although last month Ecko said, " We would never give up control of the intellectual property in Ecko. We've built this company up over 16 years," sources say that a deal with Iconix is about to be signed. [WWD]

• 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]

[Paris, October 8. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

• Sonia Rykiel will be H&M's next guest designer. Her first collection of lingerie will be in stores in December and her knitwear and accessories collection will be available in February. [WWD]

• Donald Fisher, founder of The Gap, died of cancer yesterday at 81. He served as the company's chief executive from 1969 to 1995 and remained chairmen until 2004. [WSJ]
• The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will exhibit 1,100 works of art collected by Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher, including pieces by Warhol, Lichtenstein and de Kooning. [Reuters]
• Kate Moss is joining the Performing Rights Society, which protects UK musicians and songwriters' rights. This may mean boyfriend Jamie Hince of The Kills is finally going to let her sing with him, even though he wouldn't let her perform with the band last year. [The Sun]
• "I Want To Hold Your Handbag": Comme des Garcons and Aplle Corps Ltd. are teaming up to launch a line of Beatles handbags, which will debut in November. [WWD]
• Christian Audigier is considering investing $7.3-$14.7 million in Club Med. Hopefully the deal won't include Jon Gosselin hosting anymore pool parties. [Reuters]
• Sources say Tom Ford is definitely trying to find funding to launch a women's wear collection in fall 2011. [WWD]
• Rumors that Mark Fast is doing a line for Topshop are true, according to a profile in last week's Sunday Telegraph magazine. [Fashionista]
• Agent Provocateur has made a comic book called "New World Order: Mission To Earth" featuring semi-nude caped crusaders. [Racked]
• Faith Hill Parfums is using print ads, webisodes in which Hill answers questions on the theme, "The Beauty of Being a Woman," and online discussions and polls about womanhood. [Brand Week]
• Gisele Bunchen wrote an article for The Times of London about working with Mario Testino in Rio. She writes: "If someone else asked me to do some of the things Mario does, I would say, no way. But Mario, with that clever way of his, is like, 'Ah, Gisele...' and the next thing I know, we're doing some picture with my butt sticking out. What can I do? It's hard to say no to him." [Times of London]
• Fatou Cham, a Gambian supermarket checker chosen to model for Tesco's fall advertising campaign has been arrested because she's in Britain illegally. She entered on a student visa in 1998 and never left. [Daily Mail]
• Due to the recession, raw cotton prices are expected to rise by 20 percent, which will hurt clothing retailers. [The Independent]
• Sources say Gianluca Lera is leaving Bulgari. [WWD]
• Kelly Brook modeled for an early Ralph Lauren photo shoot... sort of. She's nude and holding a bunch of hydrangeas in a strategic position. [Daily Mail]
• Gok Wan says he's grateful to Jean Paul Gaultier for developing a line of men's products, "...because if I wear women's make up, I end up looking like a ladyboy". [Times of London]
• Hermès is buying the Bond Street shop that Asprey occupies for £75m and may be planning on acquiring the entire company. [The Guardian]
• Natalia Vodianova was on the Milan catwalk for the first time in seven years on Friday, opening and closing the Ermanno Scervino show. [WWD]
• Jews aren't supposed to wear leather to synagogue on Yom Kippur as a symbol of modesty and humanity, so many have been wearing Crocs. But, an influential Lithuanian rabbi is telling Jews not to wear Crocs on the holiday because it's a day of atonement and the shoes are too comfortable. [N.Y. Magazine]
• Victoria's Secret will hold open casting calls to find a new Runway Angel for the next Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on December 1. [UPI]
• Katie Holmes says of the fashion line she's designing with Jeanne Yang, "It has been my dream forever to be in fashion and I'm truly inspired by my daughter Suri. She just loves dressing up so I decided to launch this exciting venture with Jeanne." [The Sun]
• Holmes & Yang officially launched on Thursday night at Maxfields. [WWD]
• At the event she added, "Jeanne's girls and my daughter have a point of view of what they want to wear. I'm constantly amazed by all the colors and layers that Suri will put together." [Style.com]
• Christina Binkley Tweeted: "Milan fashion week shows running late. Rumor blames Anna Wintour for introducing Roger Federer to Mr. Armani today - causing hour delay." [@BinkleyOnStyle]
• Elie Saab signed a 10-year fragrance and cosmetics licensing agreement with Beauté Prestige International, a division of Shiseido. [WWD]
• Carolina Herrera, who was born in Venezuela, became an American citizen on Friday. She said, "I have been here for many years, and I love this country very much. I love New York and everything about America. It was very emotional for me." As for the exam, "I was constantly testing people in my office... I told them, ‘With this test, you would never become a citizen,' ... Now I know more than they do." [WWD]

[Milan, September 26. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

• Model Lara Stone, size 4: "I don't want to be the fat one anymore, so, I have just started doing Pilates every morning, then going to the gym, running, and swimming." [ElleUK]

• BlackBook: "Given all of the hope Stone has offered in terms of representing the fashion industry eventually widening its narrow vision of what body type women should have, the comments are disappointing. Are Crystal Renn and Lizzie Miller our only hope?" We repeat: she was a size 4. [BlackBook]
• Model Erin O'Connor, vice chair of the British Fashion Council, came up with the all-sizes All Walks show. "It celebrates diversity and explores ethnicity, ageism, and body size in fashion." But...not size 4, surely? [The Sun]
• Jimmy Choo for H&M is officially visible. Our take? Not sure we want stilettos that high to be made on a budget! [Sassybella]>
• The two biggest teen target retailer demos are, according to a report by Euro RSCG, "jockettes" and "young metrosexuals." Don't forget confirmed bachelors! [BrandWeek]
• Teen retailers, in any case, are playing to the ones who pay the bills - even widening aisles to accommodate strollers. [WSJ]
• College students, meanwhile, are spending more on gadgets than threads. Beer, we presume, has stayed steady.[WWD]
• So now that she's preggers and not walking in London, how's 19-year-old Jourdan Dunn spending her time? "I've been watching a lot of daytime telly and eating a lot!" Yeah, sounds like our fashion week. [FWD]
• Designing sisters Savannah and Sienna Miller seem to have an Obama-boring great relationship. "Yeah, I guess we are really lucky to have a great relationship where we can work together," says Sienna. Cat fight fail. [People]
• Detroit tries to change its fortunes with a young fashion week. Sound counterintuitive? "They may seem like wildly different industries, but cars and clothes have elements in common, Detroit fashion insiders say. The city's industrial history gives it a unique design sensibility, and its manufacturing capabilities play well to a growing demand for garments that are made in America." [CNN via New York]
• Want Megan Fox's Transformers costume? Us neither, but if you're looking for a leather jacket drenched in sexxxy and stupid soundbytes, it'll be up for auction next month. [Yahoo]
• Christopher Bailey's Burberry collection won raves from the legions of celebs packing the front row. Despite the fact that the brand seeks to sever its ties with "Chav" culture, Victoria Beckham, who seeks the same thing, declared that "I've had a lot of fun." [Telegraph]
• In honor of London Fashion Week, the multimedia "SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution" exhibition has opened at Somerset House. It involves "a giant suspended polystyrene statue" of Naomi Campbell. Who declared the exhibit "fabulous." [WWD]
• Despite market challenges, Tom Ford's seeking backers to move into women's fashion. If anyone can do it, it's a man with a Gucci tractor. [Reuters]
• Speaking of defying the odds - Justin Timberlake's William Rast line, which is expected to turn a profit, will be getting its own Los Angeles store. Bringing sexy back, indeed. [WWD]
• The good news: Vogue creative director Grace Coddington wrote a book. The bad news: Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue costs $700... used. [Observer]
• Calvin Klein's teaming up with the Guggenheim to create "The Rob Pruitt Presents: The First Annual Art Awards" next month. The awards will "celebrate contemporary artists in a Hollywood-style ceremony," and for some reason James Franco is a presenter. [WWD]
• What ended Zac Posen's operatic dreams? "Opera I ended because I became a bari-tenor. And to be a baritone, you know, it's decent for musical theater, but for opera it's like THE END. So the last thing I sang was Aeneas in Purcell." [New York]
• French courts have found that there's no evidence to prove photographer François-Marie Banier gigoloed L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt via "exploitation of weakness." But Bettencourt's granddaughter is pursuing the case. [WWD]
• J. Crew and the Gap are going strong, in defiance of prognosticators' expectations. [The Street]
• We're not sure this is the route to high-fashion cred, but Britney Spears is soliciting fans' tee designs to sell on her website. [Sassybella]
• Twiggy's nemesis? Woody Allen, whom she's long-since consigned to the Academy of the Overrated. "There was one person who wasn't so nice - a young comic called Woody Allen and he was to interview me for a documentary. His first question was. 'Who's your favourite philosopher?' My heart sank. I wanted to run off and burst into tears. I didn't know any philosophers. And he probably knew I didn't. When I said so, he replied, 'Oh come on, everyone has a favourite philosopher.' It was such a cruel thing to do to a young girl." [Daily Express]

• Two weeks after adding Nicolas Cage's home to his sheaf of L.A. properties, Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier has announced he's moving into Michael Jackson's last residence. Audigier will rent the $38 million home from his C.E.O., Hubert Guez. [E!]

• The glove the late King of Pop wore to marry Debbie Rowe has sold at auction for $49,000. [TMZ]
• "I love Japan. I love the people, the shopping, the fashion. I think they have so much fun with fashion...they don't take it too seriously," says Nicky Hilton. Don't take fashion seriously? Because insanely awesome and carefully cultivated street fashion just happens. [WWD]
  
• Mad Men's Christina Hendricks tells InStyle Weddings about her planned wedding to actor Geoffrey Arend, and specifies the designer (Carolina Herrera) and the look (Sophia Loren) of her wedding dress, but doesn't let it be photographed. [People]
• Lily Cole is a model, who is also (very) smart. The Daily Mail took a break from publishing finger-wagging paparazzi photos of her and scurrilous scuttlebutt about her to notice these facts. [Daily Mail]
• Nanette Lepore would like you to remember Labor Day by saving New York's Garment District from rapacious commercial exploitation. [NYTimes]
• Juicy Couture co-founder Gela Nash-Taylor doesn't drink out of common Starbucks cups. She has her own paper cups, because "I'm so into monogramming. I'm doing it on everything right now." [ToL]
• More than 800 stores across all five boroughs are involved in Thursday's shopping-with-fun event, Fashion's Night Out in New York City. Other regional and international events are also planned. [BrandWeek]
• Karl Lagerfeld will be tending the Chanel store with Carine Roitfeld in Paris, for example. [WWD]
• R.J. Cutler's documentary, The September Issue took in more than a quarter of a million dollars over Labor Day weekend. The $40,000 per-screen average makes it the fifth-highest-grossing documentary ever made. [AdAge]
• Meanwhile, Studio 360's Kurt Anderson says that based on the film, the fashion world is "amazingly old-fashioned, like some royal artifact from the 18th Century." [Studio360]
• The Los Angeles Times says the film "charts the intersection of art and commerce with a perhaps inadvertent eye for an excess that wasn't to last." (I am quoted in this article, proving that if you write long enough and, well, long enough on the Internet, someday someone will mistake you for an expert in something.) [LATimes]
• Anna Wintour, for her part, says that complaining about the sea change in the fashion industry that has taken place since the filming of that documentary is "like talking about that house you could've bought for nothing on the beach in Southhampton. Forget it. It's gone. The amazing golden years that everyone in the industry was enjoying were fantastic from a business point of view but also maybe a little unseemly. Every celebrity thought she could be a designer, and how many handbags? How many shoes? How much of a thing does everyone really need?" Then Wintour goes to the Macy's in Queens where she will be — on Mayor Bloomberg's orders that the event not smack of elitism — kicking off Fashion's Night Out, and upon surveying the scene, asks in a horrified voice, "Can we...enhance?" [NYMag]
• Sixteen months of declining same-store sales at the department store chain might make the budget for those "enhancements" leaner, however. [BW]
• And retailers in general, after an apocalyptic fall and winter, and a barely-improved spring and summer, are hungry for the fall sales boost that events like Fashion's Night Out are aiming to provide. [WWD]
• WWD has a beautiful, subscription-only, series of photographs of various New York designers as they prepare for fashion week. Alex Wang looks radiant and un-stressed, but the same can't be said of the male models snapped lining up for a casting at Yigal Azrouël. [WWD]
• Naomi Campbell would like to point out, for all those who called her hypocritical for modeling fur in Dennis Basso's fall campaign, that she actually quit PETA years ago. So her hypocrisy has weathered a few seasons now — like a vintage mink. [SB]
• More bad news for Annie Leibovitz: the practically-bankrupt photographer is being sued by an Italian photographer, Paolo Pizzetti, who claims that Leibovitz used his pictures without consent — or payment — for a Lavazza coffee campaign. Since Leibovitz could not travel to Italy to complete the shoot, which features images of models in romantic poses in front of Italian landmarks like the Trevi fountain and the Piazza San Marco, she had Pizzetti scout locations and take snapshots for her. Then Leibovitz shot the models in a New York studio, and digitally stitched the fore- and backgrounds together. Pizzetti says he was never paid for the rights to his contributions. [AW]
• Lady Gaga is reportedly set to perform during New York Fashion Week at an after-party for Givenchy hosted by Out magazine and to be held at The Box. [WWD]
• On the night of the 13th in New York, a short teaser film for Spring '10 by Gareth Pugh will be screened at Milk studios' M.A.C.-sponsored fashion shows in Chelsea. Although the first screening will be invitation-only, the second is open to members of the public who register on M.A.C.'s Facebook page. [Style.com]
• And newly-minted director Christian Louboutin just wrapped filming on an advertisement for Piper-Heidseick champagne starring model Elisa Sednaoui. [WWD]
• Manolo Blahnik says he never wanted to be a celebrity designer, and blames Sex And The City for his unwilling transformation. "If people talk to me about Sex And The City, I get sick," he told the Telegraph. "The taxi drivers recognize me now. It becomes too much and I don't feel comfortable." [PC]
• Sojin Lee's new online fashion venture, Fashionair, has launched. Lee last worked for Net-A-Porter, and her backer is Simon Fuller's company. [Forbes]
• Giorgio Armani designed a custom costume for a Spanish matador. It's grey and spangled. [Telegraph]
• Despite growing sales, profits for 2008 at Armani shrank by 41.4%, to $188.3 million. [WWD]
• Harold Tillman, a British fashion businessman who already owns Jaeger, has apparently acquired the bankrupt house Acquascutum. [ElleUK]
• Tom Binns for Disney might seem like a weird combination, because, well, it's a weird combination. [WWD]
• The Ebony Fashion Fair, an important industry event for black designers and models, is canceling its fall tour. The largest traveling fashion show in the world, Ebony helped launch the careers of talents like Kevan Hall and Tracey Reese, and raised money for various local and national charities including the NAACP and the Urban League. The economy is the culprit. [Examiner]
• Milan Fashion Week has been thrown into "chaos" by a series of re-schedulings to avoid schedule conflicts, which begat new conflicts and new re-schedulings, and then yet more conflicts and re-schedulings. [WWD]