• 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]

• Yoko Ono turned up to the Tokyo launch of Comme des Garçons' Beatles-inspired line. [WWD]
• Christian Lacroix may not have a confirmed buyer for his bankrupt fashion line, but he will design a tower in Dubai. [AB]

• 14-year-old style blogger wunderkind Tavi Gevinson is in Tokyo this week for Comme des Garçons' holiday party. In between expressing her admiration for her idol, Rei Kawakubo, Tavi will do photo shoots with Japanese magazines. [WWD]
• EBay has started doing pop-up designer sales, like Gilt Groupe. It also has a holiday store in Manhattan, selling Norma Kamali's line for the site. [NItrolicious]
• Now that Celine has creative director Phoebe Philo, it wants to open 10 new stores conceptualized by her. Meanwhile, it is closing several of its existing stores. [UK Vogue]
• Philo's debut line for the brand has been so popular with retailers the company has gained new accounts across the U.S. [WWD]
• Forever 21 is getting into the beauty business. This month, its full 145-piece line of cosmetics will hit stores. The products look appropriately glittery. [WWD]
• The ladies at Nylon saw the gorgeous sequined socks on Miu Miu's runway, balked at the $450 cost, and made their own for about $20. Speaking as one who still wears her handknit holey Rodarte fall '08-inspired tights, I approve this DIY message. [Nylon]
• Tom Ford not only financed the $7 million cost of A Single Man himself, and wrote into the script elements of various episodes from his own life, he went so far as to fill the characters' homes with his own furniture. He even painted the paintings on their walls himself. [IndieWire]
• SATC stylist and designer Pat Field and Kim Cattrall did an ad for Bailey's. It features Cattrall wearing a red dress with a bow on it, since Bailey's is being sold in holiday-promo bottles with red bows this year, and everyone involved seems to think they are totally making fashion history, as opposed to doing some rather literal-minded if inoffensive shilling. "This dress is one of the most daring garments I've ever worn," enthuses Cattrall. [SB]
• Christian Louboutin, the shoe designer who once said "comfort is not part of my creative process," maintains he learned the value of comfortable shoes when he left school at 15 to intern at the Folies Bergère, and the dancers sent him out for veal carpaccio, which they used to line their shoes. Now he uses "technical secrets" to make his shoes "easy to walk in." But his biggest enemy in life is the ankle, because, as he puts it, "You can do a design, and it looks good on paper — then when you put it on it makes your legs look fat." We would point out that a design that only looks good on paper isn't really a great design. [Independent]
• Alber Elbaz received an honor with the rather long name the Grande Médaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris from mayor Bertrand Delanoë on Friday. When asked what he loved most about the city, the Lanvin designer said, "There's so many things. It's a dream city and it's a city of dreamers...I will be original, and I will say Parisians!" [WWD]
• Look at what Tyra has wrought: 1,500 girls lined up on Saturday in New York, and another 1,000 in Los Angeles, to try to be chosen as America's representative to the Ford agency's Supermodel of the World competition. [UPI]
• Alessandra Ambrosio's "diary" of the week before the Victoria's Secret fashion show is mostly a tale of her yearning for free time to work out, and skipping meals. Don't worry, she has a cheeseburger after it's over! [People]
• "When I was a kid, I remember telling my mom I was going to be the first woman president, an actor, then a veterinarian on the weekends," says Brooklyn Decker, the Sports Illustrated and Victoria's Secret model. "I somehow decided to be an uneducated model instead." [NYTimes]
• Helena Christensen says she dreams of "situations inspired by the work of artists such as Egon Schiele and Carl Larsson, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie book series, and the intricate yet utterly simple compositions in nature." And her dream house would be the late Edward Gorey's place on Cape Cod. Ours too. [Independent]
• This year's Pirelli calendar, shot by Terry Richardson, features no retouching. "A great photographer captures the moment — that's why I shoot without extra equipment and without assistants," claims Richardson, oddly, because he does in fact have assistants. (Perhaps they weren't used for this job?) [WWD]
• François-Henri Pinault, owner of Pinault Printemps Redoute, is looking to spin off several of his company's largest, cheapest chains, like FNAC and the mail-order empire La Redoute, in order to free up capital to invest in mid-market brands that would have both higher margins, and would sit better in a stable that includes Stella McCartney and Gucci. What this means in practice is that PPR might buy Abercrombie & Fitch. [Telegraph]

• Dana Thomas — author of Deluxe — wrote an excellent feature on the quagmire of the house of Versace. Thomas takes aim at Donatella and Santo Versace's resistance to change and ham-handed business decisions. It's a thrilling read. [Newsweek]

• "My kids are my best style advisors because they are so honest," says Victoria Beckham. "I remember one time I was wearing a Chanel cape and skinny jeans and I walked down the stairs to see my sons and they said, 'Oh my God, Mummy, you're Batman!'" [Grazia]
• We know this is hard to imagine, but the new Calvin Klein billboard in SoHo is quite sexual. Some say it "goes too far"! For more details of the development of this shocking and unexpected outrage, you can count on the Daily News. [NYDN]
• Moises de la Renta, son of Oscar, is rumored to be "inking a deal" with Mango, presumably as a designer. [WWD]
• Pamela Anderson has not one, but two perfumes: Malibu Blue and Malibu Pink. They start at $39 and are available at drug stores. [People]
• Custom, one-of-a-kind Uggs really are a level of ugliness impressive to behold. [WWD]
• Tamara Mellon says the clothes she has produced for the Jimmy Choo for H&M collaboration were hard to conceptualize, because she doesn't sketch. Then, like so many designers, she had a brainwave, and picked apart some much-loved vintage pieces, cut patterns, and slapped labels on them. [LATimes]
• Although Mellon holds the copyright to the label Jimmy Choo, the real Jimmy Choo still designs bespoke shoes for an ultra-rich clientele under the name Jimmy Choo Couture. "I design like an architect," says the Malaysian-born Choo. "It's a beautiful, distinctive art, and shoes are like the foundations. If the foundations aren't right, the building won't stand upright, and if a woman's balance isn't right, nothing else is." Are you listening, Christian Louboutin? [Telegraph]
• Kate Moss is notoriously resistant to being interviewed, so when longtime hairdresser James Brown included more of her than she anticipated in the final cut of a TV doc about his shop, she cut him loose. "She maintains her hair herself nowadays," says Brown, we imagine a tad wistfully. [Daily Mail]
• Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons has a collection of handbags about the Beatles. [IHT]
• Heard of Roksanda Ilincic? Mareunrols? Bogomir Doronger? Baltic and Eastern European designers must be a trend! [FT]
• Hey, look: someone's applying the Netflix mail-order rental model to designer clothes. Drycleaning included in the fee. [NYTimes]
• Burberry's social-networking site, artofthetrench.com, has launched. [Artofthetrench]
• Cynthia Rowley is going to design new uniforms for United Airlines flight crews. [ChicagoTrib]
• Henry Holland says he and Agyness Deyn, who both grew up in a town called Ramsbottom, rarely ponder the nuances of their unlikely fashion greatness. "We'd be complete wankers if we did that, wouldn't we? Pause the TV! 'Hang on, you're the hottest model and I'm one of the hottest young designers, let's talk about that while I make a brew.'" [Guardian]
• While textile exports are worth around $12 billion to Pakistan's economy every year, the country's garment industry is relatively under-developed. "We are still doing the 30 dollar a dozen T-shirt business. There is no value added," said Ayesha Tammy Haq. "We should be employing millions of people, not hundreds of thousands of them." Hence Fashion Pakistan Week, of which Haq is the CEO. And don't expect the clothes to be dull: "This does not represent what we are as a people," designer Ayesha Tahir Masood said. "Only 0.001 percent of Pakistani women would wear these clothes, and then only in a controlled environment when drunk out of their minds." [AP]
• Carmen Colle is a French designer who runs a company, World Tricot, that hand-makes unique knitwear to the specifications of top houses like Christian Dior, Givenchy and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Colle is suing Chanel for allegedly taking one of her crochet patterns without paying for it. The four-year-old suit is finally being heard in Paris, along with a countersuit that asks the judge to consider Colle's level of fault for daring blacken the Chanel name with such an allegation. Since filing her lawsuit, World Tricot has been largely abandoned by its other clients, and Colle has been forced to lay off all but 12 of her staff. [Guardian]
• Lord & Taylor's same-store sales have risen 6% and 12%, respectively, on last September and October. Last September and October was pretty much the middle of the giant red Down arrow of the retail market, however, so even a double-digit improvement on those results is to be taken with a grain of salt. [WWD]
• The company that makes Crocs enjoyed a $22.1 million third-quarter profit, but the stock is still losing value. The surplus largely came from a one-time tax benefit, and investors are dubious about the company's long-term prospects. [TS]

In addition to mentioning that Wintour arrived at the magazine with her own desk, New York also notes that in the fortnight their new editor has been on the job, she hasn't appeared in the same outfit twice.


Wintour's first fashion spread for New York starred a young Andie MacDowell posing on a Midtown rooftop in a Rietveld Red Blue chair.


Reader response to Wintour and her aesthetic was mixed.


It took Wintour all of until August 24 to run a spread that linked higher quality pieces with higher prices. "Investing In The Best" advises that "The right looks are also more costly, but well worth it." And they're still pulling that 'investment pieces' line on us now!


For the May 3, 1982, issue, Wintour ran a spread called "Wait Until Dark."


It was shot by Lothar Schmidt on location at Danceteria.

But one of the best reasons to trawl through New York's digitized archives is to search, in these spreads, for the headwaters of Wintour's aesthetic.

Am I alone in drawing a visual parallel between "Wait Until Dark," and a story for U.S. Vogue's September, 2007, issue, featuring Shalom Harlow?

The later spread, photographed by Steven Klein, even has the same men's wear theme.

In the February 28, 1983, issue, the cover fashion story "Metropolitan Life" features this shot of model Jennifer Rubin at Sloan's supermarket.

Vogue Paris used the Morton Williams on E. 23rd St. as a setting for its own editorial about surreal suburban malaise in October, 2007.

And in fact it was that editorial, by Steven Klein, that I always assumed was the inspiration for American Vogue's tamer, Steven Meisel-shot, supermarket editorial of one year later. But maybe all this time Wintour was hearkening back to the winter of '83?

Predictably, Wintour's love for fur blossomed early. This story, entitled "Furs For All Seasons," is from September 14, 1981. Wintour touts this "sheared-rabbit blouson that reverses to a rain jacket." It's by this designer, maybe you have heard of him, Karl Lagerfeld?

Amazingly, in 1981 a Fendi "beaver coat with squirrel necks and mole" only ran $8,250. That seems like a steal given the $64,300 gold-dipped Fendi fur coat that Vogue featured in its September, 2008, issue. This editorial does take care to point out that "None of the furs shown is on the endangered species list." So while Anna Wintour might judge you for your egret-feather hat, she thinks rabbits are fair game. Good to know.

Also in September of 1981, Wintour used a spread to boost the American profile of the then-little known Japanese designers Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto. (Apparently she was a fan of shooting head-to-toe runway looks even back then.)

Wintour shot a 25-year-old Ines de la Fressange for a story about what models wear on their own time. Her famous Anglophilia definitely shows in the spread: two of the five models pictured are British, and a third, Wintour points out, shops at an L.A. store that specializes in "English rock'n'roll clothes."

Lady GaGa, is that you?

I searched, valiantly, for a picture of a model pulling some daft pose while jumping, since that's pretty much all that Vogue publishes under Wintour's watch today. This shot from an April 4, 1983, story about British fashion designers was as close as I could get.

Eureka! The definitive inspiration for the terrible graffiti Wintour made Julian d'Ys paint on the walls of the Met.

As for this editorial, from the December 13, 1982, issue, I've got no snark.

It's actually kind of beautiful — the spread has a simplicity that's entirely missing from the sterile, massively airbrushed set pieces of American Vogue today.

I suppose you don't get to be Anna Wintour without doing something right, once upon a time. (Either that or secretly sacrificing your first born.)

All images via the Google Books archive of New York

• Nicolas Ghesquière picked the intolerably cool Charlotte Gainsbourg to advertise Balenciaga's perfume. Ghesquière calls his friend "one of the most inspiring girls in the world." Gainsbourg said, "I was secretly hoping to be the face of Nicolas' first perfume." [WWD]

• Sources are saying Rihanna has an editorial, shot by Steven Klein, in Italian Vogue's September issue. [Fashionologie]
• Julia Restoin-Roitfelt, French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld's daughter, is the face of a new perfume by Jil Sander. [NowSmellThis]
• Hold onto your quirky hats, everybody! There's going to be a new hour-long television drama set in the New York fashion world. Because it's going to star a lady, it'll be just like the new Sex And The City! Isn't that exciting? [Variety]
• The ten finalists in this year's CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund are: Flora Gill and Alexa Adams of Ohne Titel; Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin; Patrik Ervell, Sophie Theallet, Waris Ahluwalia of House of Waris, Wayne Lee of Wayne, George Esquivel of Esquivel Shoes, Gary Graham, Monique Péan, and Simon Spurr of Spurr. Congratulations to them all! The winners of the six-year-old cash and mentorship award will be announced on November 16; past honorees include Proenza Schouler, Alexander Wang, and Doo-Ri Chung. [WWD]
• Doo-Ri Chung is just one of many designers whose business has been hurt by the economic downturn. Chung is owed more than $60,000 by the owners of Jake, a small, independent Chicago boutique. Specialty retailers have been among the hardest-hit in the whole retail sector, but the two men behind Jake, Jim Wetzel and Lance Lawson, actually managed to reorganize their company when it went bankrupt, and continue on as employees of a new entity, the Jake Retail Group. Except that Jake Retail Group did not assume liability for any of the store's debts — meaning that Chung, plus other young designers like Brian Réyes, Tina Lutz and Marsha Patmos of Lutz & Patmos, and Emma Fletcher of Lyell, are out tens of thousands of dollars each for clothes they made and shipped, and Jake sold, but which haven't been paid for. [NYTimes]
• Lyle Lodwick, brother of fameballer Jakob, is a male model. He says that male models take their jobs less seriously than women models do — which is generally true — but also that women models are, naturally, bitchier. "I've heard horror stories of girls putting needles in a girl's shoes so when she's on the runway she'll fall over." Lodwick: Whichever sweet model lady told you that is pulling your leg. [TDB]
• Ossie Clark, the iconic British label that was briefly revived by private investors, is closing again. [WWD]
• The occasion of Berlin designer Patrick Mohr's recent homelessness-themed collection, where he had homeless people walk his runway caked in mud, is used to peg a list of other politically edgy collections of varying levels of success — like John Galliano's own Spring 2000 homelessness-themed couture work, Rei Kawakubo's 1995 Comme des Garçons collection that looked like concentration camp victim uniforms, and Karl Lagerfeld's 1994 appropriation of verses from the Koran. Somehow, the list ends with nary a mention of Miguel Adrover's 2001 MeetEast collection, which was so widely panned it drove the talented designer out of business. [TDB]
• Alber Elbaz: ""The people I chose to run my new store in London are nice. I cannot work with bitches, I can't, I can't. Maybe I am too sensitive, I get blocked. There are some people who don't give a damn. With me, I find that if there is no energy flowing or no connection, I can't think. Talent is amazing - I love it, appreciate it. I respect talent a lot. But if you ask me, ‘Talent and bitch, or less talent and good?' I'll go with less talent." [MyFashionLife]
• New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo caught the firm behind the "Lifestyle Lift" cosmetic surgery procedure posting fake customer reviews and testimonials on the Internet — and won a $300,000 settlement for the astroturfing. [Clickz]
• U.K. lingerie maker Intimas is in bankruptcy administration. Around 200 jobs are at risk. [ToL]
• Liz Claiborne, which has been struggling in the recession, renewed its C.E.O. William McComb's contract, but didn't give him a raise — just a bigger bonus. [WSJ]
• That story about how Crocs are going bust is getting written again, this time kind of artlessly. [WaPo]
• In the second quarter, net income at Joe's Jeans fell 17.8%, on a same-store sales decline of 4.3% [WWD]
• Chemists have traditionally been unable to produce fabrics that are reliably water-repellent when doused with hot, instead of cold, water. Which is why the development of a hydrophobic fabric coating that can repel hot water is potentially exciting news. Scientists think it could have applications in protective clothing, for instance for people who are at risk of scalding burns. [NS]

• Filling Lily Donaldson's shoes, Emma Watson, 19, will be the face of Burberry. Said designer Christopher Bailey: "Her charm and intellect and brilliant sense of fun made the whole shoot feel like a picnic on the Thames." [Telegraph]

• Celebrities: They're Better Than Us! Their World Environment Day parties may be sponsored by Lexus and hosted by Stella McCartney's West Hollywood store, but when it gets down to it, their commitment to the greening of the planet is breathtaking: "I grow my own food and I'm trying to figure out how to make my own fuel," remarked Darryl Hannah. Emily Deschanel said she celebrated the day as follows: "I ate vegan meals. I drove my hybrid. I used environmentally efficient lightbulbs. The list is endless." Endless. (What's on your list, huh?) Rosario Dawson, for her part, "didn't use plastic bags at the farmers' market." There are levels of virtue to which we, mere mortals, cannot aspire. [Style.com]
• British accessories designer Lulu Guinness wore a purple dress with googly eyes on it to the 20th anniversary party of her label. We're still waiting to see her make the Hamburgler look hot. [The Cut]
• Elle MacPherson, whose Notting Hill home has been on the market for more than a year without attracting a buyer, has slashed its price by £2 million. The seven-story house is now available at the bargain price of £7.5 million. [Daily Mail]
• Peaches Geldof was apparently having a sleepover with Courtney Love, and decided to Twitter their little tête-à-tête. Including a reference to Love's rumored new clothing line, which, and we repeat the source here is Peaches Geldof's Twitter, supposedly includes such touches as "cotton ribbed body suits," "cashmere harem pants" and "stitching a ruby into every outfit." [Grazia]
• Naming your label "Comme des Garçons" ("Like boys") is one thing, but we never thought that actually meant Rei Kawakubo had anything against women per se. And yet: "I never felt my work had anything to do with being a woman," said the designer. "I am not a feminist. I was never interested in any movement as such. I just decided to make a company built around creation, and with creation as my sword, I could fight the battles I wanted to fight." [IHT]
• Christian Lacroix, who has been designing for the bankrupt fashion house that bears his name without pay for months now, has made the sad announcement that when the company leaves bankruptcy court, all that may remain is a licensing operation. With no couture. (This despite the fact that the lower-priced lines Christian Lacroix Jeans and Bazar were hemorrhaging money, and have already been shut down.) Couture is so much the essence of the Lacroix fashion identity that we shudder to think of the name existing only to brand sunglasses and perfumes, like a revenant. One of his couture clients offered to buy the company and its debts, but Lacroix turned her down. [WWD]
• In a step towards vertical integration, Hermès C.E.O. Patrick Thomas announced the company is now breeding its own crocodiles. Not to release upon its enemies — one chomp and you're dead meat, Prada It-bag — but to speed up their production of exotic skin bags, which fetch up to $48,000, or some of the highest prices of any of their accessories. How are crocodiles farmed, you ask? Very carefully! In separate crates, to stop them biting each other and damaging their hides. "It can take three to four crocodiles to make one of our bags so we are now breeding our own crocodiles on our own farms, mainly in Australia," said Thomas. Hermès' leather goods division has continued to see robust demand for its products during the downturn. The company even added another 50-100 leather workers to its staff of 2,000 France-based craftspeople so far this year. [Reuters]
• Also chasing the tippety-top of the market: Saks Fifth Avenue. The troubled retailer is set to open its $30 million designer showcase floor, which will be filled with the likes of Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, and Armani. No doubt the pieces will be chosen very carefully, to avoid a repeat of last Fall's debacle. [WWD]
• What does an American Apparel store in China look like, you wonder? Just like one in SoHo, only empty. [Racked]
• Starting July 5, Neiman Marcus will shorten the opening hours of half of its 40 stores. [WWD]
• Even after offloading J. Jill to a private equity fund for a quick $75 mill, all is far from well at Talbots. The retailer just announced its quarterly results, and it lost $23.6 million, on the back of same-store sales that fell by 26.9%, during the period ended May 2. It plans to eliminate a full 20% of its workforce. Three hundred and seventy corporate-level workers were already laid off in February. [Forbes]

• Everyone's favorite human being, Tim Gunn, likes Dunkin' Donuts (Grace Mirabella turned him onto it.) And he can't afford to buy an apartment in New York, either! (Stars! They're just like us!) [Time Out New York]
• Simon Doonan, the woman's champion, bemoans that there's "a lot of conformity, a lot of blonde hair ... I often wonder if feminism was just a dream. I can't believe how women feel so scrutinised, and they're still so self-critical - I thought they would have let go of that now but they haven't. There's a very masochistic thing with women now that I didn't used to see. My girl friends in the punk era weren't like that at all." [Guardian]
• How's the fashion set responding to the economic crisis? "Everyone's freaking out. Everyone." [WSJ]
• AOL pulls the plug on Glass-House dwellers Joan and Melissa Rivers' Emmy coverage because of repeated humorous references to the Third Reich, corpulence. [P6]

• Prada denies it's trolling for an investor in Dubai; says it's still going public. The economy says otherwise! [WWD]
• Tom Ford's bringing in the whole Mad Men design team to work on his directorial debut. Which we would totally do, if you changed "directorial debut" to "our apartment." [E!]
• Not shockingly, Woody Harrelson is a big advocate for hemp. [Guardian]
• Of her unisex clown-in-the-asylum collection for H&M, Rei Kawakubo declares, “The collection is constructed around Comme des Garçons’ style. Rather than aiming to make clothes that no one has ever seen before, it is very much Comme des Garçons to its roots. My priority has always been creativity, which was not the least bit compromised with this collection. That was the last thing H&M wanted us to do. Otherwise they wouldn’t have asked us.” [BlackBook]
• Munichers at Oktoberfest are furious - furious! - at the poor quality of cheap, Chinese-made lederhosen. [Business Week]
• Hoping to avoid a similar fate, Scottish kiltmakers hold a summit to protect their industry. [UPI]
• Our greatest minds have come up with Kix by Katie, "a stick-on, lightweight, supportive strip which is applied to the inside back hemline of pants. This useful innovative invention adds just a bit of extra weight to your pants, making them hang down nicely." Thus is eliminated the heel-wedgie, the apparent bane of many a high-heeled dame. [InventorSpot]
• Nike's in trouble. [WSJ]
• PETA harasses Armani customers because he went back on his word about not using fur. No one makes a fool of PETA! They do that themselves! [Daily Express]
• Gillian Anderson, for one, is furious with him. [FirstPost]
• He responds by releasing a chocolate. "Available at Armani/Dolci stores this week through the end of October, the dark chocolate praline sweets are enclosed in a thin coating of white chocolate, conjuring “a tiny ethereal ghost,” the company said." [WWD]
• We apparently don't feel nearly self-conscious enough about our rapidly-aging hands. [NYT]
• Did Anthropolgie rip off their whimsical wall design? [Slog]
• British film on Hijab fashion rubs some the wrong way. [Muslim Media Watch]
• Aw, no one wants Elton John's really expensive brooch! A casualty of the economy? [The Star]
• Some Milan designers apparently in deep economic denial, all about "optimism!" [VogueUK]

• Conspiracy theories swirl around young model Ruslana Korshunova's apparent suicide. Yes, the Russian Mafia has been invoked. [BlackBook]
• Fox News, meanwhile, has apologized for Geraldo showing Korshunova's body. [Media Bistro]
• Landmark knockoff ruling against eBay garners 61.3 million for LVMH. [WWD]
• eBay to appeal. [Financial Times]
• Mischa Barton's 'vintage-inspired' bag line hits the stores. The brown clutch is actually - gulp - kinda cute. [ElleUK]

• Madonna, fashion fickle mistresses. [fashionista]
• Naomi Campbell for YSL. [Models.com]
• An unprecedentedly powerful fashion alliance at a new Tokyo pop-up shop: Comme des Garcons and Louis Vuitton! "Comme des Garçons and Louis Vuitton will open a store together for three months starting in September, where they'll offer six bags designed by Rei Kawakubo in Vuitton's signature monogram pattern. Kawakubo approached Louis Vuitton about the collaboration, and they obviously were into it; Louis Vuitton's chairman and chief executive, Yves Carcelle, sees the partnership as a great way to celebrate Vuitton's 30th anniversary in Japan." [New York Magazine]
• Steve and Barry's hits the skids, hard. [Wall Street Journal]
• It seems the discount chain now owes money to college papers. Even we don't do that.[USNews]
• Compulsive shopping: good for economy, bad for bank account, mental health. [Washington Post]
• Because who doesn't want to take hygiene inspiration from the Middle Ages? Perfumed clothing to mask b.o.! "Researchers in Portugal have developed a way to insert "microcapsules," which are small shells measuring between 1 and 100 micrometers (the latter is slightly longer than the width of a human hair) into fabrics. Fragrances can be injected into the shells, which can then be used in products from scratch-and-sniff stickers to peel-apart perfume samples in magazines." [Live Science]
• Retailers threatened by bill that would tighten restrictions on China [WWD]
• "King of the Catwalk," photog Chris Moore, holds forth on occupational hazards: "Some spots can be very high up. I recently fell off a podium at a Royal College of Art show two weeks ago and I don't know how it happened, but I fell very well, so no injuries. I keep telling everyone I'm good at falling: I keep my head out of the way and keep the camera up." [The Independent]
• The inevitable man-leggings. [New York Magazine]
• Major Trade show D&A goes green. [WWD]
• SATC knockoffs double store's profits. [Guardian]
• "Fussy Pants" fashionista survives the muds of Glastonbury. [Daily Mail]

• M.I.A. on playing the role of spokesmodel, DJ and popular celeb sighting during NY Fashion Week: "Last year I wasn't let into the Marc Jacobs party and this year I own it!" Ah, groundedness. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• International Herald Tribune fashion critic and former MJ nemesis Suzy Menkes really liked this season's (punctual!) (we're still getting over that!!) Marc Jacobs show: "It was such a good show, I would've waited three hours for it." Tell that to Robin Givhan's dog, Suze. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• On a darker note, is Marc's mom in rehab? [NY Daily News]
  
• Spain is encouraging apparel manufacturers to start making clothing sizes for three distinct different body types: hourglass, pear, and cylinder. [NYT]

• Join the Rachel Hunter-faced "Style Your Slim" Slimfast program and automatically become part of the American Express fashion rewards program. Because a woman who commits to a lifetime of shakes for breakfast, lunch and a sensible dinner is definitely committing to a lifetime of clothing sizes that change every two months. Yay, money! [FabSugar]
• Loulou de la Falaise, onetime muse to Yves Saint Laurent, to shill costume jewelry for Home Shopping Network. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Comme des Garcons designer Rei Kawakubo has partnered with Speedo to design "the fastest swimsuit ever." [WWD, sub req'd]
• Showing her Red Label line in London clearly isn't activist enough for Vivienne Westwood, who has made encouraging English designers to show in their home country into a full-out political cause. Says Red Label managing director/Westwood mouthpiece Carlo D'Amario, "London has become the global reference point for creativity and never like now there is a need for a permanent platform for the promotion of dynamic British and European talent... I call on John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Burberry among others to show their younger distribution lines here in London and unite to make London Fashion Week and London not only a centre for creativity but also for business." Talk about a rebel without a cause. [Vogue UK]
• Jezebel girl crush Tilda Swinton on her plans for Oscar fashion: "My pajamas! I'll be watching them from home." [Fashion Week Daily]
• Hush Puppies: Still around! [The Street]
• Revlon is reissuing its Kiss Me Coral lipstick after London-based designer Roksanda Ilinicic pulled the color from their archives to use in tomorrow's London fashion week show. Our grandmother will be so, um, "tickled"! [Vogue UK]
• How did unsigned unknown Argentinian singer-songwriter Lights nab a gig to do the soundtrack for all Old Navy's latest look-how-hip-we-are ads? Turns out some folks still use MySpace! [AdAge]

• The rumors are true! Victoria Beckham is the face of Marc Jacobs' spring 2008 collection and has already been shot by Juergen Teller for her print ads. Fashionista says it means Posh is now "officially and undeniably cool." Others within the fashion community are, um, bound to disagree! But they disagreed when he showed up two and a half hours late for his New York show, and he still hasn't filed for Chapter 11, so... [Fashionista]
  
• Kirsten Dunst, meanwhile, has been selected to be the face of the Miu Miu spring collection. God, is Kirsten Dunst still passing as some sort of style icon? She makes Sienna Miller look interesting. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• And speaking of! Ashton Kutcher is ousting Sienna Miller as the face of Pepe Jeans. We're pretty sure this doesn't mean great things for Ashton's career, but it means good things for us! [WWD, 1st item]

• And Matthew McConaughey is set to be the new face of Dolce & Gabbana's new men's fragrance. Gay, anyone? [Fashion Week Daily]
• Whoah: French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld was Tom Ford's muse when Ford was designing Gucci?! Yikes. [Sassybella]
• The poor, long-suffering Stella McCartney won designer of the year at the British Fashion Awards, which gives us some hope that there is a God, as she beat out "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" slag Anya Hindmarch for the title. No, nevermind, we take that back: Agyness Deyn took home model of the year and Hindmarch did win best designer brand. Marchesa (co-designed by Harvey Weinstein's special lady friend Georgina Chapman) won best red carpet label and Christopher Bailey won best menswear designer for Burberry. The totally insane Dame Vivienne Westwood won for outstanding achievement in fashion design, which we guess means that the voters just decided to pretend that her incoherent "manifesto" about the state of culture today never happened. [Vogue UK]
• The woman who brought us J Brand jeans is now moving into the world of dresses, launching a line of all-jersey dresses called Riller & Fount. They'll retail for between $100-$156, which we're pretty sure is still cheaper than a pair of fucking J Brand jeans. [WWD, sub req'd]
• The designers of the label Rodnik started a rock band. Also called Rodnik. And their first single just dropped in England. And Rei Kawakubo is throwing them a party to celebrate at the Commes des Garcons flagship store in London. Who wants to bet whoever DJs it will make more than Rodnik ever will for a gig? [Vogue UK]