• The first pictures of Lindsay Lohan's foray into cosmetics have been released: at left, the often-orange starlet shilling for a spray tan called Sevin Nyne. [People]

• Sojin Lee, formerly of online pioneers Net-a-porter.com, and Simon Fuller, the man who gave you the Spice Girls and Roland Mouret, are starting an internet fashion business together. [WWD]
• Times critic Cathy Horyn went to a Chanel party, found Olivier Zahm and Stefano Pilati and no champagne. So she had a Bud. [The Moment]
• "When I'm wearing a hoodie, it looks like I just threw a hoodie on. I'm wearing what I discovered and figured out is the best hoodie I can find. And I'll tell you, if you ever want to know the best hoodie, I know the best hoodie." Whatever you say, John Mayer. [FabSugar]
• Editors are picking designers instead of models for their covers lately. Diane von Furstenberg graced Purple (and the issue promptly sold out) last month. Perhaps noting their success, this month i-D has Miuccia Prada on the front. [Fashionista]
• In case you need to be reminded why models can make great cover choices (perhaps your name is Anna Wintour?), the Times' "The Moment" blog has this neat feature where you can slide your cursor over a photo of Kasia Struss or Jourdan Dunn to see how the makeup and hair looks at the shows come together. Latest additions: Jean Paul Gaultier and Dior. [The Moment]
• And, on balance, why they might not: "I'm not your cheesy girl that's going to dress up in a hokey outfit and say all the sound bites that you want me to say," says Erin Wasson. No, Erin, you're certainly not! [Daily Beast]
• Sean Avery's fashion friends came out to support him at his first Rangers game since that internship at Vogue. Even the guy who works the door at the Beatrice showed up. Who says this business doesn't foster loyal and real connections? [Observer]
• There are pictures of Roberto Cavalli's new Cavalli Pets dog clothing line. The line includes a satin trimmed bath robe. For your dog. And leopard-printed shearling jackets. For your dog. [The Cut]
• Roberto Cavalli also sells sex toys. The inimitable New York drag queen Lady Bunny mentioned them to Fashion Week Daily, although she does say they're kinda small. [Racked]
• Model blind item: "Whicih two veteran models got into a "full-on serious fistfight" in a Paris nightclub this Fashion Week? The fight was so démodé, Uncle Karl himself had to break it up." Invitations to name the offenders or improvise the Kaiser's dialogue in the comments. [Fashionista]
• Freida Pinto says the news she is going to be a face of Estée Lauder is "but a lovely rumor." [WWD]
• "Beauty, economy, and usefulness are the best rules for the well-dressed woman," said Depression-era American fashion designer Muriel King. It's sound advice for today. If you're in New York City, you'd do well to check out the new exhibit of King's work at the Museum at FIT. King was a painter who got into fashion when she became an illustrator for publications like Vogue and Women's Wear Daily — eventually she hired patternmakers and garment workers to turn her original sketches into reality. [Style.com]
• And laundry detergent is the new fashion must-have. Tim Gunn says so. (And we can all agree with lower drycleaning bills.) [WSJ]
• Although J. Crew recently instituted cost-cutting measures including layoffs, a wage freeze, and suspending company matching of 401(k) contributions, the retailer's fourth quarter losses still reached $13.5 million, because of weak sales. However, because analysts had expected even bigger losses, their stock price rose. [Crain's]
• Interestingly, they still have plans to open more stores. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne CEO Bill McComb lives in New Jersey. His misfortune is lessened by the fact that his company pays $10,500 in monthly rent to maintain a New York apartment for his occasional overnight stays in the city. Liz Claiborne's revenues shrank 10% last year, as same-store sales at Claiborne-owned Juicy Couture, Lucky Brand, Kate Spade, and Mexx all dropped by over 12%. The company announced its plays to lay off 8% of its workforce in February. [Crain's]
• Charlotte Russe is offering itself up for sale. [Dealbook]
• Neiman Marcus's quarterly loss: $509.2 million. Sales in the three months ended January 31 fell by over 20%. [WSJ]
• Comparatively speaking, American Eagle's modest fourth quarter profit of $32.7 million is a relief, in that it's not a loss. Revenue fell 9% on a year ago, and the company says the results are disappointing overall. [The Street]
• That L'Oreal/eBay legal wrangle over the sale of counterfeit goods online has been delayed in the French courts. [WWD]
• In honor of Young Buck's announcement that his clothing line, David Brown, is no more, Complex magazine has a look back at the top ten failed rapper clothing lines, including Master P's No Limit Clothing, and Fat Joe's FJ560. [Complex]
• Who else but Heidi Klum drove the Barbie dream car to the Barbie dream house in Malibu. [FWD]

WWD inferred the worst from Marc Jacobs' decision not to throw one of his typical post-show megabashes, as well as the fact that Zac Posen, Calvin Klein, and Alexander Wang were among those who similarly cancelled their party plans. This week, even the New York Times couldn't seem to resist the convenience of the party-over metaphor, casting a vernissage at the new Diesel store as a gathering of lost souls. Welcome to the brave new fashion, where frivolity is out and celebs don't pack the Beatrice Inn. Except it didn't happen that way.

I'm no gadfly compared to some, but I go to the occasional night spot, and I can't say I've noticed any appreciable difference in the quality or tone of revelry on offer this season. Maybe I wasn't going to the echelon of party that was canceled to begin with. But this week it seemed like there was the same familiar mixture of people in day-glo accessories, fedoras, Derek Blasberg, your boyfriend's also-a-model ex, and cash bars as ever. Perhaps I've always sensed a ticking heart of melancholia at the center of these kinds of gatherings, where the dance floor has air quotes and everyone puts up the tiresome pretense of not mugging for the party photographer, even back when the economy was gaining ground as opposed to ceding it. (But that probably has always said more about me than about my surroundings.)

Earlier this week I actually saw Lara Stone in person, and I couldn't help but unabashedly stare at her while I stood waiting to pay $18 for a martini that proved to taste like it had been mixed inside an empty orange juice carton. I also saw a man dressed in chain mail and a guy who had light-up rods, actual spiny, glowing bones, sewn onto the outside of his black gloves, like an extra from Blade Runner. Alexander Wang was being congratulated on the stairs, and someone wanted to go to the Purple party, but someone else was like, "When is Olivier Zahm ever not at the Beatrice?" and frankly it all felt very September '08, which is to say it felt very much like any other fashion week. It was sniffy noses and ironic flannel and heavy eyeliner. It was Blackberries and coats that looked like muppets killed for a good cause and testing your clout by lighting that cigarette inside. The other night someone who looked about 19 asked Patrick McMullan who he was shooting for. "I would've recognized your son, I think," she said, semi-apologetically.

Every story this season is about how fashion has become such a terrible, morose End Times-y affair. The narrative is that before, shows were always buoyed by the rising tide of economic good fortune and front-row bold-face names and the parties, they were always terribly glamorous and fun. Now shows are always things you sneak into out of the drudgery of obligation, and when you're caught in the act, you give mealy quotes to the press about how sorry you are, how inconsequential even you recognize it all to be, and how attendance at this particular temple of Baal is unfortunately mandated by your job at this little magazine that covers fashion. And the parties that follow the shows, well, nobody who recognizes the seriousness of Our Straitened Circumstances could possibly acknowledge any interest in such frothy frivolity.

Thing is, you could have written that kind of story last season, or any other season for that matter. Models were getting paid in trade last season too, and a great many seasons before. Editors have always been people aware enough to acknowledge some self-doubt on the question of the actual relative importance of this season's heel or bag; the fashion set is not dumb. But nobody in the media would have thought to cast any previous season in any such light. The before/after is a constructed narrative, and it's one I'm just getting a little sick of reading. This industry, which I love, is troubled — nearly 20,000 jobs were lost in textile and apparel manufacturing and retail in the month of January, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and many designers and stores are struggling across the spectrum of price points — but all the deckchairs on the Titanic rhetoric seems like unwarranted melodrama, simultaneously too dire and not serious enough. (The last recession, in the early 1990s, gave us Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and Marc Jacobs.) It's too early to write fashion off; and it is, dare I say it, frivolous to do so because of some party that was or wasn't thrown.

As The Economy Goes, So Do The Parties [WWD]
Despite Happy Meals, There Are Troubling Signs Around Fashion Week [NY Times]
At Fashion Week, Everyone Looks Sullen, Not Just The Models [NY Times]

Earlier: Chloé Sevigny Party Made Me Hate Fashion Week, Life
I Think I Hate Fashion Week

This is an awfully sweet dress that my boobs will never fit into in a million years. Shall we focus on the (adorable, affordable) hat instead?
Quotidian dress, $168; flora fedora, $48.

Yeah, wide pants are back. Do you own a single tuckable top? Me neither.
Addeo cardigan, $118; Cobblestone wide-legs, $118.

If you can wear that sweater dress, you've got less to work with in the hip and thigh area than I do. Kudos. And please note that the sweater from the cover is really borderline crazytown spin-art.
Mazzola sweater dress, $148; Soutine cardigan, $118.

I like the tights, the skirt and the shoes. The jacket thing is not working for me. And I hate to act catty and stabby but I sort of want to punch this woman. Not the model. The "character" she is playing. Who wears stuff like that and stands like that. Fuck off.
Hope & Union jacket, $188; Sufi skirt, $128.

Ooh la la! I love this. I love cardigans! And inverted pleats, and stripes, and cute skirts, and those shoes. I always want to dress like an "insouciant ingenue," but I think if I wore this it might come off as "spinster schoolteacher."
Pisacane sweater, $118; Sweet Life skirt, $148.

There's so much hideosity I don't know where to look. At the bird, I guess. He seems to have crapped all over that dress.
Double-button sweatercoat, $128; Summer tanager dress, $158.

People keep saying that ugly is the new pretty but this shit has got to stop. I just can't get behind this pageboy on LSD thing.
Cropped button trousers, $188; Veery heeled loafers, $118.

Sure, on this model, this coat is floaty and feminine. Anyone else will look like a demented escapee from a summer theater production of Tartuffe.
Dove's flight sweatercoat, $188.

Purple peep-toe pumps? Pretty please!
Parula peep-toes, $398.
My mom would like this dress. She loves butterflies. I am not so inclined. It is not my steez, as the kids say.
Whimwing sweaterdress, $248.

Why yes, that is a mouse nestled in that shoe. This is what passes for "quirky" at Anthropologie.

Violet trenchcoat: Want.
Plum perfect trench, $268.

[Anthropologie]

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Pottery Barn, Anthropologie & West Elm: Bedding Porn For Sleepyheads
Anthropologie "Giving": We Love To Hate & Hate To Love It
Please Do Not Look The Anthropologie Model In The Eye
Anthropologie Doesn't Care About Black People