• Holy fuck: George Clooney, fashion designer?! [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• No: Just a prank pulled by some douchey Italians. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Says Clooney: "This is a hoax. I have no connection whatsoever with any clothing line bearing my name, and more specifically GC Exclusive by George Clooney." Ok,ay well now we know. [Vogue UK]
  
• And how did Vivienne Westwood celebrate Easter? By marching for nuclear disarmament, of course. [Vogue UK]
  
• Whoah: they serve cake every Friday at the H&M design offices?! [WWD]
  
• The Banana Republic green line is, um, literally green. [Nylon]
  
• Nicole Richie is starting a jewelry line. Which is only a bit less offensive than starting a handbag line. [Off The Rack]

• I can't tell if it makes me happy or sad that Topshop is going to be featuring Helmut Newton photos in their stores. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Mazel tov to Saks Fifth Avenue for having the first-ever video catalog. Because now it's easier and more visually exciting to have expensive shit shilled at you! [MediaPost]
• New York Fashion Week: Moving to to the Port Authority, probs. [NYMag]
• Breaking news: Proctor & Gamble just bought Frederic Fekkai. [WSJ]
• India Fashion Week brought all the boys to the yard. [WWD, sub req'd]
• DSquared2: Doing eyewear. [Vogue UK]
• Perry Ellis: Doing a bed and bath line. [MediaPost]
• Versace helicopters! [Chic Report]
• No money for beauty treatments because of the recession? Just wipe some aspirin across your face. [BellaSugar]
• Leaping lizards, Batman! A smiling model! [Sassybella]
• I would actually wear a bra if I had a Twin Peaks Bra. [UPI]

I was actually pretty surprised I won. I wanted it so badly, but I needed it more than I wanted it. I'm just getting started....I'm not looking to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I want to brand myself as well, but I want my clothes to be high fashion, avant-garde. It's easier to take inspiration from something that's creative than to build on something that's not. I don't want to do QVC.

Fortunately for Siriano, he — unlike Project Runway alums Chloe Dao, Jay McCarroll, Emmett McCarthy, and Laura Bennett — won't have to: Barneys New York, Jeffrey's, and Saks Fifth Avenue have all already bought pieces of his. So, yeah — one week after winning and Siriano, on talent and personality alone, is already the most successful person to have come out of the Bravo show. Other reasons to love Christian? He cares about his friends. "The only episode that bothered me was the first part of the finale. They showed all of the other designers with their friends and family, but not me. I had a bunch of friends over, and they cut it out of the episode. I'm not alone out here," says the clearly sensitive soul. Also, he's still friends with model Lisa Nargi. Says Lisa, "He's someone I'm always texting or sending messages to on MySpace. When things calm down for him, we'll definitely see a lot of each other....His clothes are going to be up there with the top designers. They're going to be the clothes that everyone wants to have. He'll be a designer like [John Galliano]."

And how is his life different post-Runway? "I can hardly go out anymore," he says. "Everyone wants to touch me or carry me, which gets really annoying after the first few times. You'd think I was naked the way people look at me....But I get paid to do parties now." Oh and does he say "fierce" anymore? Of course not: His phrase du jour is now "I'm gonna stab you."

Rubbing Elbows, Making Art [The Advocate]

• Whoah. Prada Fall 2008 Menswear: Now featuring skirts! Oh yes, this is something guys would totally buy. [Chic Report]
  
• RIP Miu Miu menswear: The line will be discontinued as of the Spring 2008 collection. What, Miuccia just couldn't top skirts for men? [WWD, 1st item]
  
• WWD headline on Isaac Mizrahi's move from Target to Claiborne is: "Will He Hit Or Miz?" [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• And in other Claiborne news, the company is rumored to be in talks to license of its Dana Buchman label to Kohl's. [WSJ]

• Aeropostle, in an attempt to save the world and increase brand awareness, is launching a campaign called Teens for Jeans, encouraging its customers to donate their gently worn jeans at any Aeropostle store, to be given to homeless kids. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Anna Wintour must be a really good American Express customer: The credit card giant has just donated $500,000 to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which provides cash prizes to those young designers whom La Wintour deems worthy.
• Try to contain your excitement: Rihanna is doing a second umbrella line for Totes. [WWD, 2nd item]
• The after-party alone for Kate Moss's birthday last night cost approx. $40,000. [Vogue UK]
• Designer Charles Nolan on his latest philanthropic endeavors: "In the spring I'm hosting a group that's all about microlending...do you know that if you lend money to people, the 98 percent that pay you back are women? The two percent that don't—men!" His heart is in the right place. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Julia Restoin Roitfeld, Lily Donaldson, and Theodora Richards have been "brought on" by fashion label Joie to host a party for the house during Fashion Week to make the line seem hipper, cooler, younger, etc. Incidentally, Joie hired Vladimir Roitfeld (Julia's bro, Lily's beau) to put the party together. Incesterfuckin marvelous. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Saks Fifth Avenue's spring advertising campaign features not models but illustrations. Didn't Nordstrom just do that? [Sassybella]

• So that's what Naomi Campbell was doing in Venezuela: interviewing Hugo Chavez for British GQ. Now they're sending her to talk to Fidel Castro. Is this a fucking joke? And if not, does she realize the whole Latin American socialist alliance thing is like, kinda last season? [Vogue UK]
  
• Selling real fur as "faux": clever move, Neiman and Saks! [Consumerist]
  
• On the heels of an ELLE redesign, Vogue is undergoing some design "tweaking" of its own. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Agyness Deyn is the face of — well, the whole entire fucking universe, including the Armani cell phone. [Sassybella]

• Marketing ploy we just can't avoid: Blackberry has asked Karl Lagerfeld, Dita von Teese, Henry Holland and others to share their favorite secret spots for the masses on their new website The B List. Karl: likes eating tacos at La Esquina in NYC. Where they put crickets in the tacos! [Vogue UK]
• Signing bottles of Armani perfume in Milan, Beyonce shared how excited she was to go to her "mum's" for Christmas. Oh god. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Whoah: Over-the-knee Uggs. [FabSugar]
• Coach: still doing meh. [Portfolio]
• Lanvin Spring 2008 ads: you know, they said the giant tent-dress trend was over, but not really getting that vibe with this one... [Sassybella]
• Valentino Spring 2008 ads: who needs plastic surgery when you've got a giant handbag to shield your face? [Sassybella]

• Tom Ford has purchased a large tract of land near his New Mexico home to prevent it from being sullied by oil harvesters. For what did we invade Iraq, if not to preserve the nation's country homes? [Vogue UK]
  
• The rumor mill reports that Jessica Simpson has inked a fragrance deal, and the scent will be on shelves by this summer. Top notes of Chicken Of The Sea, perhaps? [Sassybella]
  
• "I don't like cheap things usually, but this collection is nice and of good quality," says Anna Della Russo, who styled the Roberto Cavalli for H&M ads. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• English designer Luella Bartley has decided that what the world needs now is...a line of femme-only surfwear that is both totally "street" and totally "70's" Ummm, whatever. Brazilian dance band CSS' frontwoman Lovefoxxx will be the face of the nonsensical line. [Vogue UK]

• Now that Karl Lagerfeld has graced China with his Fendi fashion show, the floodgates have opened! Yohji Yamamoto is headed to Beijing next. [WWD, 2nd item]
• The San Francisco Ballet and Saks Fifth Avenue are throwing a huge party for Patsy and Edina's favorite designer, Christian Lacroix! Which is why it's not really awkward that he told them he isn't going to be able to make it.... [WWD, 1st item]
• Tiffany & Co is branching out into eyewear. Sure to be spotted exclusively by 13- and 14-year old girls within, oh, 2 days of its launch. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Over 700 fans turned up to see Tom Ford in an appearance he made at a Milan department store, promoting his stupid fragrance Tom Ford for Men with its even stupider NSFW advertising campaign. [WWD, 1st item]
• Barney's Creative Director Simon Doonan is awesome but a complete liar: "[P]eople in the fashion industry are actually quite warm. They're always congregating and interacting. I honestly wish they were more bitchy, like the folks in the music business. But our flock is very sweet." [Fashion Week Daily]
• The children who were found in India making Gap clothing should be reunited with their families soon. In the meantime, Gap pays the expected lip service, thanking the media for exposing this problem and saying how of course they do not use nor support child labor. [MSNBC.com]
• More than 20 cities worldwide stage their own biannual fashion weeks, which means you could probably spend an entire year attending a fashion week every single day, which will probably be a really clever-sounding book proposal in a few weeks — the year I spent doing nothing but waiting in line and starving myself in 20 international destinations! — on the quirks of culture and globalization and the meaning of fashion, etc. Paging Lauren Goldstein Crowe! [Sassybella]