• Lindsay Lohan, finally addressing her disastrously received first Ungaro collection, says, "I am learning." But she will be back in Paris for the next show! "It's already in January. I thought it was in March." January? January means couture.

Could Mounir Moufarrige seriously be reviving Ungaro's couture division — which was shuttered in 2004 — with Lohan at the helm? God help us. Lohan also denies any responsibility for, or foreknowledge of, those ridiculous sparkly heart pasties that the Ungaro models purposefully flashed during the show that just walked in Paris. [People]

• Selena Gomez is launching a fashion line, called Selena Gomez Dream Out Loud. Something called Cynosure Holdings is responsible for the collection, which seems appropriate, somehow. It's not coming out till fall 2010, so if the economy gets worse, there's still time for it the whole idea to slink quietly away, like Pastelle. [WWD]
• Here are some first looks from Rodarte's Target collection, due out on December 20. It includes a lot of leopard print, lace, sequins, and tulle. [Seventeen and A Tiny Machine]
• Carmen Marc Valvo focuses on the positive: "I've survived in this business for over 20 years. And I've survived colon cancer; so a little dip in the world economy isn't enough to keep me down." [Houston Chronicle]
• Badgley Mischka are doing a lower-priced line, called Mark & James. [WWD]
• Ordinary New Yorkers speak out on Filippa Hamilton, the Ralph Lauren face who was fired for being too fat, at size 4: "It makes me angry," says Alexandria Blackwell, 15, of the Bronx. "They always want skinnier." Dr. Robyn Silverman, a child and teen development expert, says, "If a stunning size 4 model is too overweight to look good in their clothes, then they need to change their clothes, not the model." Revolutionary! [NYDN]
• Delia Ephron, on clothes and life: "Clothes have special power. I'll always remember the raspberry colored v-necked silk sweater I was wearing on my husband and my first date. If I hadn't been wearing that sweater that night, would any of it have happened?" Nora says dressing well becomes more important as women age. "Of course it does, because looking good is so easy when you're young. For openers, you're young, and that looks good." [Glamour]
• Linda Evangelista, on doing a shoot for W with chickens: "I grew up in Canada, in an area where everyone had chickens. I mean, we weren't supposed to have chickens — it was a residential area, but we did. Also, when I went back to Italy with my parents where they grew up, there were chickens. So you can say I know a lot about chickens." [W]
• Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles' limited vocabulary drew the attention of Fashion Week Daily, which provided a handy summary of Coles' questions for Hilary Swank, with every repetition of the word "assume" highlighted. [FWD]
• Crocs is opening a flagship store in Boulder, Colorado. [UPI]
• Someone, somewhere, "officially" named Ines de la Fressange the most chic woman in Paris. Carla Bruni, eat your heart out! [Telegraph]
• "I'm excited to go to Olympics in Vancouver," says former figure skater Vera Wang. "I'm definitely going. I always try to go anytime the Olympics come close to our continent!" She still thinks about her former sport. "Skating became a different sport with the magnification of television. And certainly a few exciting things happened in between, like knee clubbing and scandals to raise the sport's profile. But in the end, it's one of the most beautiful spectator sports that you can watch. It's not just about being insanely athletic; it's all being expressive and artistic. There's no other sport that combines spinning, jumping, choreography, costumes, music all in one- it's a full on press." [FWD]
• When she moved on to being an editor at Vogue, Wang had a few hairy moments. "There was a time where I put all of the furs on a Vogue shoot with Deborah Turbeville into the water, and the entire fur industry wanted to sue me," the designer recalled. "Another time we ruined a Frank Stella painting…we were shooting at night and I remember watching a model jumping up and down in front of a work of art that fell apart. It's hard to put a number on it, but that work of art was worth a quarter of a million 35 years ago. That's probably $3 billion now." [WWD]
• Vera Wang popped in to Karolina Kurkova's baby shower, which was also attended by Adriana Lima, Michelle Monaghan, Rachel Roy. Lima, who is also pregnant, compared bellies with Kurkova. [P6]
• Heidi Klum says she's not going to try and lose the baby weight just to be in this year's Victoria's Secret show. [People]
• Jason Wu is greeting his adoring public in Taiwan this week. [WWD]
• Zac Posen is dipping his toe in the churning waters of advertising. Coco Rocha stars and Ellen von Unwerth shot. [Fashionista]
• "Being fierce is a state of being, not something you can become. It's a high point of being a certain persona. Ferosh is a downgraded version of being fierce." — Leading ferocity expert Christian Siriano. [Star-Trib]
• The Gap is bringing back television advertising, after two years without. The chain will also open a flagship in China next year, but overall the company plans to reduce its retail space by 10% over the next five years. Its September same-store sales were down a relatively modest 1%. [TS]
• H&M's same-store sales slid 8% in September. [WSJ]

• Giorgio Armani might be made Senator for Life (a real position) by the Italian president. The designer would then vote on the national budget, and "beautify" parliamentary proceedings. Armani's reaction to the nomination, and his political leanings, were unknown. [WSJ]

• Pamela Anderson has got to be the driest wit in Hollywood. When the tabloid press asked her to name her style icon, she replied, "Humpty-Dumpty." Pressed on the subject of her perfumes, Malibu and Malibu Night, which will be sold only at drugstores starting this November, the actress said, "That is why I always smell so cheap." Then she pulled up her Vivienne Westwood bedsheet dress — it "came with a million safety pins, and Westwood told me to just pin it and knot it in a bunch of places" — and walked away. [P6]
• Then she wrote a hand-written note to Allure. "I've been offered fragrance contracts like everyone else and their dog (hey, that's that good idea, all natural, of course) but all the elements never came together — the stamp of approval from PETA; the environmental aspects. (I was a bit ahead of my time). But now it works!" And: "I worship drugstores, it's hard to get me out." [Allure]
• Karl Lagerfeld has been immortalized in a 25 cm vinyl doll. The best part? Mini Karl is mute. [DazedDigital]
• The best part about Betsey Johnson's award from the National Arts Club? Her portrait will soon hang among the Gramercy Park institution's other dusty luminaries. We can't decide if this maneuver raises the NAC's stock more than it depresses Johnson's — perhaps O. Aldon James, Jr., will write us a letter of explanation — but we still think it's pretty awesome. [WWD]
• Guiseppe Zanotti is obviously one of those people who pulls a face when posing next to a famous person. In this case, Blake Lively. Oh, isn't he wild and spontaneous! [People]
• Four words: Olsen twin sunglass line. [Elle UK]
• Charlize Theron is collaborating on a t-shirt line for a humanitarian cause. Give and Take Tees is releasing $42 vintage-inspired t-shirts, and half the proceeds will go to Theron's own Outreach Africa Project, which funds a mobile health center for rural South Africa. [People]
• Laura Mulleavy, of Rodarte: "I can think of this outfit we did like our fall '08 collection that was red and black and it was all just hairy, leather jacket and fur. For me, that collection was specifically about Japanese horror films and this idea of these girls coming from the ground and being tied down with twine with the hair dangling in their face, and just being completely just like this sunken girl that maybe got stuck in a well somewhere, and I don't know if that would translate into everyday life as I see it, but I don't think that's necessary. I don't know, maybe I am just creating for, you know, the one character that survives." [DazedDigital]
• Kanye West had been planning to launch a clothing line called Pastelle since even before he gave us the immortal lines, "So go 'head, go nuts, go ape shit/ Specially in my Pastelle or my Bape shit." Pictures from a lookbook shoot for the brand finally hit the Internet yesterday, only for Yeezy to announce he's scotching Pastelle as a brand entirely. It's as dead as his Gap collaboration. But there still may be a Kanye clothing line under his own name. [HighSnobiety]
• The bankrupt Germany fashion house Escada has reportedly attracted 10 different would-be buyers. Perhaps it's not too much to hope for a Christian Lacroix resolution here? [Forbes]
• The Limited is trying to claw its way back to brand relevance. It's starting by opening a pop-up store on Spring St. in SoHo, re-launching the discontinued brands Forenza and Outback Red, and hiring Jodi Arnold — as in MINT Jodi Arnold — as a "partner." Does this mean we'll see Jodi Arnold designs at The Limited prices? C.E.O. Linda Heasley, who test-drives unreleased garments herself, says the company is looking forward to its first profitable year in well over a decade. [WWD]

• Elle UK is, for some reason, all agog over the 20-year-old celeb spawn, who they say has had some kind of chic makeover since turning 20. "It's official. We have a new style crush here at ELLE in the shape of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis' daughter Rumer." Well, to each her own, we say! [ElleUK]
• Rihanna models a look from Kanye West's new "Pastelle" clothing line. It kind of looks like she's wearing her dad's sweatshirt. [The Life Files]
• Designer John Varvatos (recently known for taking over punk emporium CBGB in New York and turning it into a high-end boutique) has a new baby girl: Thea. [P6]
• Remember that community garden Forever21's destroying in L.A.? It gets worse: "It's the former site of the South Central Farm - "where low-income, indigenous/immigrant Latino farmers grew food in the midst of a toxic industrial area for 14 years." Wait, Forever21's not an ethical company? But it's so cheap! [Feministe]

• Simon Doonan does his part for the economy with the new Barney's Catalog, which is centered around a narrative called "Emma's Dilemma." As Emma, model Coco Rocha is torn between two men and various luxury goods. '"The theme is, 'Oh just buy both,'" said Doonan, adding that even though the economy is fragile, the catalogue's message is right for these times. "Embedded in there is permission to be a little self-indulgent. It's a bit of glamorous self-indulgence." [WWD]
• Speaking of Cocos, the new Lifetime miniseries about Coco Chanel blows. "Shirley McLaine plays the "older" Chanel to Barbara Bobulova's younger incarnation, with the two apparently bearing "no resemblance to one another other than they both like a well-cut suit". [VogueUK]
• Narciso Rodriguez on the recession: “The economy is such that it’s a tough moment for everyone. We are happy we haven’t decreased the business in any way, but the company usually grows like 20 percent every year, and that hasn’t happened. We are trudging through this Bush mess and looking forward to the next steps.” They're also looking forward to a new fragrance. [WWD]
• Nautica, not an official Olympic sponsor, scores best product placement of the Beijing games: on Misty May-Treanor's forehead. [NYP]
• With back-to-school sales continuing to disappoint, retailers entice the young, predator-style, over the internet. Take Kohl's, who's selling a new line on Stardoll.com, "a virtual community for teens and tweens where kids can fork over "Stardollars" — purchased online at a nominal sum — to buy apparel for their online characters." It seems like, implicitly, retailers are hoping kids to a little clandestine shopping behind their penny-pinching parents' backs...[WSJ]
• Those "detox foot pads" that soak up all your toxins herbally and turn black overnight? Apparently they're frauds. [NPR]
• Foundering chain Steve and Barry's creditors probe a suspect $5 million loan. [WSJ]
• Gap pursues scorched earth policy, firing almost all its Euro designers. "The global chain will axe its European fashion design team from September, and is moving its advertising team to its US headquarters. It will, however, retain an in-house design team working on store design, visual merchandising and in-store events." [MediaBistro]
• Fendi makes hideous $575 patent hightop. Looks kind of like a 19th century work boot, only not a all utilitarian. [The Life Files]
• You know times are tough when even Target 's profits are down. [WWD]
• A California woman designs modest "halal" swimwear that covers the body. '"I understand most people are accustomed to not seeing a lot of clothing on the beach or in the water," Sabet said. "We don't want to look like freaks or stick out like sore thumbs for being so covered up on the beach, but I wanted to help make water activity accessible to Muslim women."' [UPI]
• Nearly "1,000 bra makers protested outside the German embassy in Bangkok on Tuesday in a labor dispute stemming from the vexed issue of whether Thais have the right not to stand up in honor of King Bhumibol Adulyadej." Basically, a union leader was sacked for wearing a politically-charged tee asserting her right to remain seated during the anthem, which is played before movies. It's an issue because the king has been traditionally been perceived as a semi-divinity and this view is meeting with increasing resistence. The bra company then fired her to avoid making waves; hence the protest. [Reuters]
• Mini courts the "creative class of New York" with its rooftop Fashion Week happening, '"curated" by
  Jefferson Hack, along with a performance by MGMT. ' [WWD]
• Model Gemma Ward "officially retiring" to pursue acting. [Sassybella]
• Vena Cava/Via Spiga (try saying that one five times fast) collaborate on capsule collection that could well be rad. [WWD]