• Julia Roberts will become a face of Lancôme, appearing in ads beginning early next year. Roberts earns up to $20 million per film, and could realize a similar amount from her first major beauty contract; the company won't say. [WWD]

• Kate Moss so admired a fellow wedding guest's bracelet that her friend, Topshop owner Sir Philip Green, bought it off the woman's wrist. [P6]
• David Lynch is directing the next Marion Cotillard Dior handbag ad, and he's filming her in Shanghai right now. The video is intended to continue the story of the noirish, Hitchcockian ad by Olivier Dahan the company released in May. [Elle UK]
• Christian Lacroix has announced that he will not be involved with any of parent company the Falic Group's future projects for his namesake label, which was this week allowed to be reduced to a licensing operation by a Paris bankruptcy court. Lacroix had not been paid by Falic since the fall of 2008. The French minister of industry thinks the closure of the house of Lacroix is a travesty. He is trying to use diplomatic networks to contact the most interested-seeming buyer, an Emirate sheikh, "to alert him of the urgency of the situation." [WWD]
• Police acting on a tip raided two Detroit area stores selling counterfeit Gucci, Coach, and Polo clothing and accessories. (One had what it claimed was a $4,000 jacket on sale for $700.) The seized goods would have retailed for about $800,000, had they been genuine. [UPI]
• Silvia Fendi — the lady behind the baguette and the spy and the B Fendi bags — designed new guitars for OK Go to take on tour. The tricked-out Gibsons feature white leather, rivets, and goat fur, and, for that extra special touch, a red-and-green LED panel that flashes with the band's lyrics. "Any time an ‘F' appears in their lyrics, it's our double-F logo," says the bag lady. We need a picture of these guitars pronto. [WWD]
• Proenza Schouler has added e-commerce to its website, Proenzaschouler.com. [Vogue UK]
• Sephora is going to roll out 20 cosmetics vending machines to small J.C. Penney stores that lack full-service Sephora counters. Each machine will offer 50 of the makeup retailer's most popular products. How space-age. [WWD]
• Bottega Veneta is getting into the fragrance game. Expect the first perfume to launch in 2011. [WWD]
• André Leon Talley re-arranged a trip to China to attend the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's opening night. Though in his words he would not presume to dance, Talley did express a willingness to go horse riding, some day: "Because the man and the horse are ballet. The communication between the man and the horse in a race, that's sort of a little dance." [The Cut]
• For some reason, it is considered news that Marc Jacobs gave Will Smith a bunch of free clothes to wear during the presentation of the Nobel Prizes in Oslo. You'd almost think Smith was the laureate. [WWD]
• Aw, watching Oprah can make Chris Benz cry. [TFI]

• Dita Von Teese wears two Elie Saab couture creations in her limited-run Paris show. Is it strange that the only people who can afford couture these days are burlesque artists and Saudi princesses? [IHT]

• Fashion week is "hitting the reset button" because in this economic climate, return on investment is ever more important. [WWD]
• And don't expect any parties. Really. [WWD]
• The show schedule is now available online. [The Cut]
• Christian Siriano will be there, in the Salon at the tents, showing his new collection for Payless. Which is good news because at $25-$45 for bags and shoes inspired by Egyptology, these are that rare affordable fashion week thing. [WWD]
• Interesting: Richie Rich, everyone's favorite glittering ex-club kid, is showing on February 18. At no less a venue than the Waldorf Astoria, demonstrating once and for all that his particular brand of sparkle can exist above 23rd St. There hasn't been much heard of Rich since the end of his old label, Heatherette, which he ran with Traver Rains. [The Cut]
• Rich is promising "Head-to-toe wearable" for his namesake collection. Wonder how this'll shake out. [WWD]
• Isaac Mizrahi already showed his fall/winter collection for Liz Claiborne. It looks good, and involves something called "Kaleidoplaid." [Style.com]
• And the re-re-animated Halston is forgoing a show in favor of a video it's going to e-mail to editors and buyers on Saturday. [WWD]
• PETA's also gearing up for its favorite parasitic marketing opportunity of the year. Giorgio Armani, who stopped using all fur except for, it claims, rabbit pelts left over from the meat industry, recently drew the pressure group's ire and his New York flagship store will be picketed. [NYDN]
• Jason Wu, the American Vogue cover getting, Michelle Obama outfitting, 26-year-old fashion superstar, is to be sold on Net-A-Porter.com. [UK Elle]
• New York Magazine has 10 models to watch this season, you know, just some real new faces like that girl who walked for Marc Jacobs that one time and that girl in the current Prada campaign. [The Cut]
• Finally, a fashion magazine for the girls who smoke cigarettes behind the parking lot at school and could tell a Steven Meisel from a Steven Klein at 50 paces before entering their teens. Carine Roitfeld, editor-in-chief of French Vogue, is rumored to be assembling a team to launch a biannual teen fashion magazine. French Teen Vogue! Ooh la la. [FWD]
• Chanel Iman is supposedly to have a walk-on part on Gossip Girl as a guest at one of Serena's parties. A tipster reports she ate macaroni and cheese for lunch. (Chanel's still at that age where you can eat anything and not gain an ounce. Sigh.) [Daily Intel]
• Emma Roberts, Julia's niece, is another new face of Neutrogena. [WWD]
• Lorenzo Martone, Marc Jacobs' boyfriend of 11 months, seems like a charming romantic. "Valentine's Day is two days before his show, it has to be very quiet, but I'm still planning a little surprise," says the Brazilian. "During the last Vuitton show in Paris, I didn't tell him I was going to go — I just showed up in Paris in his office with flowers as a surprise the day before the show. He was totally, totally surprised. It was really, really good to see his reaction, and I don't know — we are so in love that it was really gorgeous to see his eyes." My heart, it's melting now. [The Cut]
• Two acts who grew up in Illinois, Liz Phair and OK Go!, are among the musicians featured in Banana Republic's New York-themed spring campaign, which will be out on February 18. [Brand Week]
• The "Got Milk?" campaign is the latest concern to drop alleged domestic abuser Chris Brown from its roster. Cover Girl says it's standing by Rihanna. [E! Online]
• Jones Apparel Group posted a slightly smaller-than-expected quarterly loss of 4 cents a share. (Analysts had expected 5 cents.) Revenues for the company even rose, by 1%, to $846.9 million. Let us all cheer not-bad fashion business news! [NY Times]
• Nike is cutting 4% of its 35,000-strong workforce. [WWD]
• Bob Marley's family has licensed his image and name, along with catchphrases like "Catch a fire" and "One Love" to the company Hilco Consumer Capital, which paid some $20 million in the deal. Hilco already owns Ellen Tracy and Linens 'n' Things. [Reuters]
• Hadley Freeman scored the first interview with Phoebe Philo, newly of Celine. Marco Gobetti, the LVMH vice-president with whom Philo is rumored to already be clashing, makes an uncomfortable joke about having to "cover up the bruises" — his, or Philo's, it's not clear — before the journalist arrived. [Guardian]
• The New York Times' critical shopper visited the new Brooks Brothers Black Fleece store in the West Village, and found the Thom Browne-designed line very interesting if not ultimately practical. (There are fit issues with the womenswear.) Still, the theory is good: "Picture a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Nurse Ratched, only more obsessive-compulsive. It is a look so stiffly starched - all the buttons are just so very, very buttoned, both up and down - as to recall corsetry, humane restraint devices or orthopedic inserts. It is a look that may mold and instruct the wearer in his relentless quest for superior health, posture and hygiene. As the 'Goldberg Variations' were to Glenn Gould, these clothes seem to be both the tools and execution of a meticulously tended neurosis." [NY Times]
• This sounds awesome: Prada has asked four stylists, including Carine Roitfeld and Katie Grand, to style their stores in New York, London, Paris and Milan. Anyone not in those cities can see the project online. [WWD]
• Whoa. Raquel Welch is shilling reading glasses. I suppose One Million Years B.C. was a long time ago. [Brand Freak]
• There's an entertaining and thoughtful Q&A with someone named Chicken John Rinaldi, who apparently led the fight against the proposed American Apparel on Valencia St. in San Francisco. Rinaldi comes off rather well: "It depends on whose liberty you are defending. Are you defending the liberty of American Apparel to open a store wherever they want? Or are you defending the liberty of the people who live on the block? Or are you defending the people who shop at the store? Or are you going to defend the liberty of the people who own the other stores whose rents are without question going to quadruple?" [Mother Jones]
• And now, our daily minute of hate: Italian brand Relish's new campaign, shot in Rio de Janeiro but featured now on billboards in Italy, features men dressed as Rio cops molesting women as they arrest them. [Shakesville]

Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me

You'd think, based on the title of the anthology Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me, that the men who've contributed essays to it have learned something from women who've dumped them. Well, some of them have! Actually, as I flip through the book again now, I can only find one essay that has a thoughtful take-away that might help someone who finds him or herself in a similar situation. It's by Ok Go singer Damian Kulash, Jr. and it's called "A Dog Is No Reason To Stay Together," but an apter title might be, "Don't fool yourself into thinking you can make a long-distance relationship work, especially if you are in a band that has just recently become successful." Damian examines his relationship with former live-in love Amanda with sober maturity. "It was love - love like you see in movies. Except in movies, relationships don't change, or grow, or slowly fall apart. They either last forever or end mercifully fast with a thrown plate and a jump cut." That sentence is exactly as good as this anthology gets.

Things with Amanda didn't last forever, but Damian's bio notes that he's now married with two dogs. Actually, almost all of the men in this anthology are married, and Damian is one of the few who don't make a big deal about it in their stories. You know that thing Neal Pollack (oh, he's in here!) does where he's like "I'm married, did I mention that I'm married, I can't be that bad of a guy because someone married me, okay?" That's a recurring theme here.

Most of these guys are comedians or comedy writers or memoirists of the "I'm a lovable loser, haha" variety - Andy Richter, Nick Hornby, A.J. Jacobs, Will Forte, and a slew of former Onion and SNL writers are represented (Chuck Klosterman, where are you?) They often begin their essays, especially when writing about high-school or college-era rejections, by marveling that any woman has ever found them attractive. "God bless arty girls and booze!" Andy Richter writes of the factors that finally enabled his college-fatty self to get laid. "During the course of the evening - aided no doubt by generous portions of cheap beer - I tricked her into liking me," is how Will Forte describes meeting his first serious girlfriend. Whenever men write about getting laid despite being outwardly undesirable, I immediately get suspicious. It's so The Game, you know? It just seems like a weird kind of inverse bragging, especially when they talk about how attractive the girls they somehow managed to bone were, especially when said girls' attractiveness is the only thing about said girls that seems to merit mentioning. Okay, boys, we get it. Even before you were semifamous for being smart and funny, you could still get some. Probably you were smart and funny even then! Um, good job!

The only thing less appealing than false modesty is outright bragging, and there's some of that here too. In 'Things More Majestic And Terrible Than You Could Ever Imagine,' Onion writer Todd Hanson catalogues a litany of women who've dumped him that reads more like a sexual highlights reel. On a list entitled 'Things positive," he writes, "Sex with two heavily tattooed punk-rock drummer chicks whose breasts bounce hypnotically as they hammer away onstage is pretty much as amazing as you'd imagined. I cannot emphasize this point enough." Wow, Todd. Two.

But bragging is still more appealing than vengeful muckraking, and there are a couple of essays in this anthology that have to be filed under that heading. These are essays that seem designed with a single reader in mind - the girl who will glimpse this book on the 'new nonfiction' or maybe even the 'Valentine's Day' table, see her exboyfriend's name on the cover, and open it up to the essay about what a terrible person she is. Damian Kulash's admission that he misses his ex-dog far more than he misses his ex-girlfriend pales in comparison to Andy Selsberg's essay 'A Grudge Can Be Art." Andy details his affair with a nineteen year old aspiring actress eleven years his junior. To be fair, he doesn't seem to be taking any pains to portray himself as anything like a decent or mature person - he acknowledges that continuing to hate a woman with whom he spent less than forty-eight hours ("and that includes being asleep together") for fucking his roommates is pretty ridiculous.

But his parting shot is still kind of stunning in its naked vindictiveness: "I do know where I'll see her eventually: on a reality show. She is genetically and socially engineered to tear through one of those setups like an erotic tornado." There's no way the intervening years could've changed this girl, of course. After all, they haven't changed Andy! Some boys will never learn.

*Full disclosure: the "guy" is the fiance of my best friend and former Jezebel contributor "Heather" and he is not a jerk at all; in fact he is much better and nicer than I ever imagined he would be when he brutally ass-raped the first piece of mine he edited back in the day (;-) Ben!) so that fits right in with my thesis. Also, sorry Emily, for writing this. It needed to be done. That was some fucked Up ish. And readers, sorry for all the "meta." It's Friday. That is my only excuse.