• House of Style is coming back on MTV! Israeli model Bar Refaeli or L.A.'s own Chanel Iman are rumored to be in the running to fill Cindy Crawford's old hosting slot. [Page Six]

• Isaac Mizrahi's first collection for Liz Claiborne just went online, in an annoying Flash animation you have to flick through with your mouse. No pricing info is included, but the line will be in stores and online next month. [Liz Claiborne]
• That Brooks Brothers Black Fleece store on Bleecker St. that's been "opening in Fall 08" for freaking ever is finally throwing wide its doors today. [WWD]
• Stella McCartney opened a new boutique in Paris, her first in that city. Old friends like Marianne Faithful and Catherine Deneuve duly turned up. On staying slim with Madonna's trainer, McCartney said, "I've had a few sessions with her, but she's always off on tour with Madonna, so now I just go round to Gwyneth's and we dance about together." Fun. [Style.com]
• If you can't share a personal trainer with Madge, you can see an exhibition of her stage costumes. "Simply Madonna, Materials of the Girl" opens in London on February 21. [Independent]
• Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent's business and romantic partner of 50 years, is talking to the media for the first time about the designer's struggles with depression. A shy, nervous young man, Saint Laurent was conscripted into France's war with Algeria in 1960, where he was brutalized. Upon his return to France, he was committed and given shock treatments and high doses of drugs. Says Bergé: "Sadly, Yves was not built for joy. He was an unhappy person who didn’t have a taste for life. Occasionally, he was happy, but life was difficult for him. The depression ran deep." On his aesthetic, Bergé notes: "Saint Laurent detested fashion. Style is what he liked...Chanel may have given women liberty but Saint Laurent gave them power." [Telegraph]
• Interesting: Bloomingdale's is holding an open call for new designers. That's gotta be better than Project Runway! [WWD]
• Dazed and Confused shot a black-lit video to celebrate DKNY's 20th anniversary. It maybe looks a little like Liquid Sky. [Fashionista]
• For the DKNY Jeans spring campaign, Sartorialist Scott Schuman shot British model Daisy Lowe. [The Sun]
• Today's bankruptcy: Unthinkable, Inc., owner of the label Claude Brown. Owing between $1 and $100 million, with between $100,000 and $1 million on its books, Unthinkable filed for Chapter 11 protection from 50 creditors. [Crain's]
• Imagine an event that would bring together Ivanka Trump, Philip Lim, Tory Burch, and Barbara Hulanicki (who founded the Biba boutique in London where Anna Wintour got her first fashion job), and you have the Fashion Group International's Rising Star awards. Lim gushes all over Hulanicki, who gushes all over Lim, and meanwhile none of the MCs can pronounce "Burch" or "Ivanka." Must've been a hell of a luncheon. [Observer]
• McQ Alexander McQueen for Target's campaign will be modeled by a creepy blonde doll with eyes that change color. What, they couldn't get a Russian to put in contacts? [Fashionista]
• Karl Lagerfeld, compelling, chilly fashion mastermind, is the subject of an excellent Rodolphe Marconi documentary called Lagerfeld Confidential. We get a peek at the Kaiser's home, Nietzchean morality, and lecherous habits with male models. Also, I'm pretty sure I remember at one point he says, "People who live alone and spend a long time on the telephone are romantic freelancers." It screens February 9 on Sundance and you should watch it. [Fashion Week Daily]
• If you give supermodel Angela Lindvall directions on a shoot like "Crawl around like an animal! Rrowr!", she will raise one eyebrow at your dumb concept and do something better instead. [The Cut]
• Jean Paul Gaultier model Ines de la Fressange: 51, gorgeous, and dubious about black nail polish. "I like the fact that [Gaultier] didn't try to disguise me or make fun of me in some way, by making me wear black nail polish like the other models." How does she stay in shape? "Winston Churchill always said the best exercise is no exercise so let me put it this way; I do as much exercise as Churchill! And I never do Botox or plastic surgery either." She sounds like a riot in this interview. [Time]
• Then, de la Fressange found time to go to the Elysée Palace and congratulate Sonia Rykiel and Jean-Louis Scherrer at the formal ceremony where President Sarkozy made each of them commanders of the Legion of Honor. [WWD]
• Ever wanted to learn how to make shoes? Jimmy Choo wants to teach you. [Telegraph]
• Natascha McElhone, of Californication fame, will be the new face of Neutrogena. [WWD]
• There WILL be Steven Allan for Uniqlo! [WWD]
• Plan for a Gisele-heavy future. The Brazilian beauty has bagged spring campaigns for, at last count: Versace, Dior, True Religion denim, and Rampage. Oh, and she'll totally be the North American face of Max Factor for years to come. Resistance is futile! Clearly being a safe bet as one of the few models the proverbial man on the street could immediately recognize has its ups in an economic climate like this. [WWD]

Lagerfeld Confidential is not exceptional filmmaking by any means — it plays like an extended Barbara Walters special — though perhaps the film's director, Rodolphe Marconi, exhausted himself trying to edit the 350 hours of tape he'd culled from his two years with the designer. But the finished product is something anyone with even the slightest interest in fashion should probably see. Don't take my word for it? The real critics weigh in with details after the jump.

New York Times:

The movie offers no résumé or analysis of his work. It is simply an extended interview, without talking-head commentary..."I don't want to be real in other people's minds," [Lagerfeld] declares. "I want to be an apparition" ...He says he was aware of [his homosexuality] by the age of 13, when he told his parents, for whom it was not a problem. When an older man and woman made passes at him, he recalls, his mother, instead of flying into a rage about child molestation, scolded her son and said such incidents wouldn't happen if he didn't behave so provocatively..

"I don't have roots," Karl declares. (Or so the subtitles translate it.) "That's all bullshit. I just want to stand on my own two feet."..."I love change; I'm attached to nothing"; "I'm not really interested in the reality of people"; "For people like me, solitude is a victory" — [these statements] seem less the whimsical bons mots of La Mode than grim Nietzschean aphorisms... Mr. Lagerfeld is grim and guarded, hiding behind the quintessential fashion crutch: sunglasses indoors.

[R]emember the words to live by: "Pissing everywhere isn't very Chanel!" Rodolphe Marconi [says] "...If you saw him on a Sunday, completely alone, he'd be entirely dressed. But even though he's very wrapped up in his persona, in the fashion industry, and in commerce, he's not, how do you say, a 'starfucker.'"

We learn what he purchased on a visit to the Dior Homme boutique on 57th Street (a shiny gold jacket), the age at which he was first sexually active (13), and his views on prostitution (pro) and gay marriage (con: too bourgeois). Confidential may not be the place to learn of Lagerfeld's contribution to the art of fashion, but there's abundant evidence presented on his contribution to the art of the epigram:... "People with turbulent lives who spend their time on the phone are sexual freelancers."

Though Lagerfeld speaks of his childhood as though it were perfectly normal, psychoanalysts might beg to differ: He calls his mother a "nasty" and "frivolous" woman who "made slaves of her lovers and husbands" and "never thanked anyone," but he also claims to have adored her and thought "other mothers were stupid." We wonder if other mothers would have reacted as Karl's allegedly did when he informed Ma Lagerfeld that he'd been sexually compromised by a pair of adults: "It's your own fault, just look at you!" Blaming the victim is totally Chanel.

The few people I know who knew me as a child say I was like a male Shirley Temple - rather unbearable and spoiled.

I love the smell of building sites.

I can't plan six months in advance; we might be dead by then.

[Fashion industry jobs] aren't jobs that fit any criterion of social justice. It's like cinema. Lots of boys and girls want to do it, but very few make it. Sadly, Nicole Kidmans are thin on the ground. To do this job you must be able to accept injustice - the same goes for fashion. There are other careers. You can work for Social Security, get promoted and work behind a counter. It's a safe bet. If you want social justice, be a civil servant. Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair.