Perez Hilton's Clothing Launch Attracts Single-Digit Crowds; He Weeps. Sharon Stone Would Invoke Karma.

• Reports Hot Topic eyewitness:"ONLY 7 people showed up. SEVEN. That’s it. Mario was BEYOND upset texting and DEMANDING the right water, food, ETC he was a rude royal pain in the ass and BEYOND crass... My manager was trying to get people to come in to meet Perez by handing out $5 gift cards NO ONE WANTED TO MEET HIM! ...he left around 8:45PM without saying goodbye to anyone & looked like he had been crying like the little bitch he is. We sold a grand total of $6.45 of Perez Hilton items between 6PM - 9PM. My manager has already talked about discounting his ‘line’ !" [New York Magazine]
• GAP "ends child labor" after subcontracting comes to light. [WWD]
• Recession a boon(?) for consignment shops: "'Everyone is feeling the pinch these days or knows people who are feeling the pinch,' said Linda Kenney Baden, a prominent lawyer in New York. 'It’s good to buy a used car again, and it's chic to buy used clothes.'" [New York Times]

Designer Divas Naomi Campbell And Sharon Stone Get Spanked

• Naomi Campbell has finally been charged for her April freakout at London's Heathrow airport. “Campbell is accused of three counts of assaulting a constable, one count of disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress and one count of using threatening, abusive words or behavior to cabin crew, according to reports.” Her court date is set for June 20th; does anyone think that maybe a stint in juvie could set her straight? [The Guardian]
• Christian Dior cosmetics spokesmodel Sharon Stone continues to pay for her ridiculous remarks regarding last week's earthquake in China: Dior is pulling all ads starring the Hollywood wackadoo "from all of the department stores and from all of China". Karma, baby! [NY Times]
• Andre Leon Talley is returning to the Savannah College of Art and Design to speak at the school's May 31 commencement ceremony. Think he'll wear the "floor-length red satin robe and silver crown accented with red 'rubies'" this time around? [Paris Parfait]

Claudia Schiffer Does Not Exactly Have Much To Hide

• Well, someone is looking perky at 37. But who? Dodai likes this cover but I'm against stupid masks being used to conceal the mugs of celebrities I haven't seen enough of. I feel like the last I saw Claudia Schiffer was in her exercise video. [Telegraph]
  
• Celeb stylist Phillip Bloch got a little taste of Abu Ghraib when he got thrown out of a Kanye West concert at Madison Square Garden for hanging out with a bunch of teenage girls who were smoking pot. "They never asked for ID, never asked for my name. It was complete brutality," he says. [NY Post]
  
• "Remember, when our customer tightens their belt, it's generally ostrich or alligator." That's Neiman Marcus CEO Burt Tansky, just echoing Thomas Frank's sentiments on the ruins of the "man-made catastrophe that proceeded directly from the deliberate beatdown of organized labor and the wrecking of the liberal state." [Slate]
  
• Making one's rack look and feel respectable is hard enough without forcing bras to perform additional functions like transporting wine and crap, but leave it to the Japanese to invent a solar-powered bra that can charge a cell phone. [Reuters]

Meet Karenna, Martha Stewart's Wardrobe Mistress

• Martha Stewart has a wardrobe mistress paint the soles of her Christian Louboutins black. We would endorse this, as we take most of our fashion cues from the fictional character Cayce Pollard in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and think that conspicuous logos are the scourge of the universe, but blogging about the fact that you not only remove said logos but have a "wardrobe mistress" to do it for you is not exactly inconspicuous. And yet...I love her? [The Martha Blog]
  
• Ooooh, promo shots from Stylista, the new Tyra-produced reality show wherein the winner gets to be the assistant to known-psychopath Anne Slowey! Anne, an Elle editor, is one of those fashion people who is driven batshit by persistent fad dieting, but the resultant batshitism, in an industry whose shallowness is matched only by its aloofness, can be kind of endearing, unless you are her assistant. Ratings gold! [Fashionologie]
  
• Tori Spelling and her son are shilling for Skechers, which I find fitting. I mean, Skechers is sort of the Tori Spelling of shoe brands, and if you don't believe me I'm here to remind you the company was founded by the same guy who brought the world L.A. Gear. [SassyBella]

God Bless Ridiculous Fashion Folk, Every One Of Them

• God bless Vivienne Westwood for being so undeniably herself. Says the fashion designer-cum-philosopher: "I'd like to do less, but there are people dependent on me now. My thing has always been, just let me finish this pair of trousers and then I can read my book. We've all got to wear something, I suppose. So my advice would be to buy quality. Choose well. I think there's a certain status in seeing someone wearing the same thing over and over again." [Vogue UK]
  
• God bless Heidi Klum. She's just so wise: "[Take] time out for yourself so you can engage in an activity that you really enjoy. [Also, don't] neglect the romance in your life. [And] wear pretty lingerie if you don't want to feel schlumpy." [Vogue UK]
  
• God bless Donatella Versace for saying at the Times Talks on Sunday that her fashion motto is "Don't let the rappers wear more bling than you do!" and that she hopes to be reincarnated as Maya Rudolph. [Fashion Week Daily]

Is Marie Claire Taking Over Elle's Sloppy Project Runway Seconds?

• More rumored changes for The Greatest Show On Earth, Project Runway: Season 6 of the show, the first to be broadcast on Lifetime, may feature "More Than A Pretty Face" magazine Marie Claire in lieu of Elle as the affiliated fashion magazine sponsor. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Whoah: Are New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn and Skeletor/stylist Rachel Zoe more similar than we could have ever imagined? Possibly, if it's true that Cathy Horyn was also mysteriously not invited to the dinner and dancing portion of tonight's Costume Institute festivities. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• And what does legendary costume designer Bob Mackie not like about the fashion industry? "Doing a fashion show that's on for 20 minutes and then it's over and everybody runs to the next one. Nobody sings, nobody dances, nobody tells jokes. I found it quite unsatisfying." I second that emotion. [WWD, sub req'd]

Nina Garcia Glares At Mention Of Affair On Ugly Betty

Nina Garcia Thinks Your Birth Control Is Aesthetically Unpleasing

• It's official: Nina Garcia is officially a has-been. The recently-fired Elle fashion director is now partnering with Bayer and Yaz to judge a contest in which people submit designs for a new little case to hold birth control pills. I don't know about you, but I like the purple faux-suede "wallet" that my Yasmin comes in just the way it is. [Fashionista]
  
• OMG sneak peek of Nina and Christian Siriano's performance on this week's Ugly Betty. [Sassybella]
  
• Radiohead: Fighting sweatshops. [Yahoo]
  
• Fergie is so P.C.: "I really love people who wear fashions of their own culture; they really touch me and inspire me. I'd like to call myself cultured and not just because I travel a lot and see various hotel rooms. I love driving around, seeing what people on the street are wearing, I would even ask my driver to take me to a cool, young part of town for inspiration. If I went to Africa I would come back with tons of different things, because I truly wouldn't find those things anywhere else." [Chic Report]

Donatella Versace Expresses Love For Fellow Blondes

• Donatella Versace loves Hillary Clinton but thinks she should dress more like Donatella Versace if she wants to nab the presidency. [Vogue UK]
  
• But forget politics — where are we, Washington D.C.? — Donatella would much rather meet Martha Stewart. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• This week on Ugly Betty, recently fired ELLE fashion director Nina Garcia will appearing alongside Project Runway winner Christian Siriano. But in the season finale, ELLE's Nina-ousters Robbie Myers and Joe Zee will be appearing on the show, in a storyline featuring a softball game. Needless to say, this would seem to indicate a rapproachment on the level with Nixon meeting Mao, except when you remember that the common goal is not being on TV. [WWD, 3rd item]
  
• How the fuck did Heidi Montag's clothing line outsell Victoria Beckham's at Kitson's? [TMZ]

Sex And The City Movie Could Not Afford Clothes In Sex And The City Movie

• It will not surprise anyone to learn that the clothes worn in the Sex & The City movie were not paid for by the movie's production budget but by designers hoping that product placement in the movie will result in clothing sales to actual people convinced that dressing like the characters in Sex & The City is a wise course of action. [Variety]
  
• Speaking of which, Matthew Broderick on the opening of his latest film, the Helen Hunt-directed Then She Found Me: "We just get dressed, get in a car, and hope for the best. But Sarah Jessica's premiere will be a big one! She looks really beautiful today, but it's just the dress rehearsal for now." [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Hell to the no, Rami Kashou did not copy Yves Saint Laurent in designing a dress for Heidi Klum! [NY Mag]
  
• Bloomingdales' workers are on the brink of their first-ever strike. That's what you get when you let retail workers unionize, Terry Lundgren! [Crain's]

Is Nina Garcia's PR Company Using Interns To Promote Her Cause?

Christina Ricci Is Not The Face Of Louis Vuitton

• How did Christina Ricci respond when someone from Interview magazine asked how she likes being the face of Louis Vuitton? "Well, I'm not anymore. I was one of four actresses that they used in a campaign once and it was really fun. I liked it. I would like to be the face of Louis Vuitton. I am not, however. You know who is? Scarlett Johansson is the face of Louis Vuitton. Wrong interview." Awkward. [WWD, 4th item]
  
• Back in 2007, Harvey Weinstein said of NBC Universal top dog Jeff Zucker (who is, you know, now suing Weinstein for taking Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime), "You can only have in your life five true friends, and I consider you one of my five friends." All together now, once more, with feeling: Awkward. [Page Six]
  
• We're guessing that Nina Garcia is turning down that editor-at-large gig at Elle since she was seen eating lunch yesterday at Bergdorf Goodman. Working fashion editors don't eat. [Page Six]
  
• How surprising: Prada isn't going public come June, as previously announced. (Actually, no one's surprised about this at all.) [NYT]

Harvey Weinstein's Out To Get Nina Garcia, But In A Good Way

• "We'll get her," says Harvey Weinstein of ELLE's Nina Garcia (Weinstein) is being sued for breach of contract for taking Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime. While Weinstein is probably the first person to say anything about wanting to continue to work with Garcia, we find his statement more creepy than encouraging. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• "I am fine alone now, but not when I'll be 90," says Giorgio Armani of having a private equity firm get involved in his business. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• "Buying vintage or revamping clothes and making things myself is my take on helping the environment." Oh bite me, Zooey Deschanel. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• "I used to consider myself Italian, but now I feel very European." —Margherita Missoni. [Fashion Week Daily]

ELLE Continues To Toy With Nina Garcia's Affections

• The latest on the Nina Garcia saga: If she takes the editor-at-large gig she'll only be there til mid-October, when ELLE's contract with Project Runway ends and then she'll be let go for reals. (Dear Nina: You can do better than that.) Meanwhile, no one at ELLE or its publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media has issued a single comment on the entire situation. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Meanwhile, everyone at ELLE is pissed that the taping of its reality show Fashionista is ruining everyone's lives. [NY Daily News]
  
• Audrey Tatou is rumored to be the newest face of Chanel No. 5. Does this mean that Nicole Kidman got the boot? Maybe she and Nina can start a sort of ex-wives club together. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• "I think the luxury is not only what we give to ourselves, but what we can give to others. Obviously, we can get more of this and this, but the true luxury is being able to give back. When one has been blessed with the ability to have made it...it's our social responsibility." Nice try, Donna Karan. But...no. [WWD, sub req'd]