41-year-old Seymour, who married Brant 16 years ago, filed for divorce in March of this year. Seymour alleges that Brant "harassed and intimidated" their three children, ages 5, 13, and 15, and told both domestic staff and their youngest daughter's school not to let her near the kids. For his part, Brant alleges that Seymour took the children to San Diego, where she has family, and then jetted off to Las Vegas to see "a male friend." Brant is apparently also the kind of guy to have commissioned a bust of his wife, from the artist Maurizio Cattelan, that viewers liken to a hunting trophy.

The two each continue to reside at their large Connecticut estate, which — in addition to Brant's polo team and prized ponies — has several houses. ($500,000 a month in maintenance ought to buy one at least that much.) This has caused problems. Seymour says a security guard in Brant's employ assaulted her; the guard has filed a countersuit saying that Seymour assaulted him. And everyone is fighting over art. Lots of fancy art:

Another filing accused him of spiriting a small museum's worth of artworks from "the marital residence" without Seymour's consent, a haul that allegedly included nearly 50 Warhols-Brant had a long association with the artist-as well as works by Koons and Prince, not to mention some drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat that had hung in Seymour's bathroom and a pair of Cindy Sherman photos allegedly pilfered from her dressing room.

...Yet another filing accused her of making off with her own Sotheby's lot: five more Warhols, another Cindy Sherman, five Tiffany picture frames, and a leopard throw rug. (The filing doesn't say if it was genuine leopard.) But her greatest sin, in Brant's view, may have been that she supposedly loaded the valuable and delicate artworks into the back of her S.U.V. as casually as if they had been soccer gear or lacrosse sticks.

Oh, please. Like that caliber of wealth would have faux leopard anything.

In some ways, the write-around reads like it was composed essentially to offer Vanity Fair a reason to publish these recent Mario Testino shots of Seymour. Which, in the context of a discussion that references assault allegations and, you know, human heartbreak — there are children involved! — really is tacky as all hell.

Gaetano Ferrero, one of Brant's lawyers, takes the ugliness in stride: "Suffice to say that there are a lot of allegations and cross-allegations going back and forth. I don't think either [Seymour's counsel Thomas Colin] or myself would tell you that we know who is right and who is wrong. We have been doing this much too long to simply take our clients' word for it."

First, The Gloves Come Off [VF]

Earlier:
The Supermodel's Household Savings Plan

Peter has been ordered to begin paying Seymour, his supermodel wife of 16 years, $270,000 a month in alimony and support for their three children. In the global context, $270,000 — every month — is a lot. That sum could buy 900 operations to repair obstetric fistulas in the third world, or pay for 60 new, clean water wells in Kenya. But in the context of Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour, it's not very much at all.

According to court filings, Brant, who owns a paper company as well as magazines like Interview and Art in America, has assets of $490 million. His net monthly income this year — a pretty bad year for the media — has averaged just over $1.5 million. What does he spend it on? And might it just be possible to economize a little?

Well, for starters, Brant owns a farm in Connecticut. It's 200 acres, and the main house on it resembles George Washington's mansion at Mount Vernon. He owns "40 some odd" polo ponies, and maintains a fully sponsored professional polo team on the property. (He's disbanding the team and giving away the less valuable horses — that is, the $10,000-$15,000 ones.) The cost of all this? $500,000 a month.

Suggestion: It's a farm. Get rid of the horses and raise some soy beans. Or apples. Or organic heritage grains. Or whatever. Pronto.

Photo of Mount Vernon via Encyclopedia Britannica.

Maintaining his Jeff Koons topiary sculpture, Puppy — pictured here is the Puppy outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao; Brant's is an exact replica — costs up to $100,000 a year.

Suggestion: Invest instead in one of Koons' stainless steel sculptures, or perhaps a nice Anish Kapoor; we're thinking durable, shiny, and most importantly, low-maintenance. Realize extra savings by polishing it yourself.

Image of Puppy via Wikipedia

What's Stephanie supposed to do if she wants to go on vacation? $270,000 wouldn't even cover one week of kicking back, Brant-style: the 150-ft yacht Brant chartered for his and Seymour's kids this summer cost the mogul $300,000.

Suggestion: This paddleboat only costs $3,499.95.


Peter Brant gives $216,000 a month to his foundation, which funds his art museum, which is conveniently located across the street from his house. It features a rotating selection of the many works by Warhol, Koons, John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, Larry Clark, and Cindy Sherman, that Brant owns.

Solution: Why not hang your pictures on the walls of your 20,000 square foot house? Also, 50 cents will get you into the Met.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #7 via official website

Brant spends $30,000 a month on "household supplies." You know, everything from "toothpaste to towels."

Suggestion: CVS sells the jumbo size tube of Colgate Total Whitening for $3.99.

Brant has some suggestions of his own about how Seymour should spend her money. Last month, he alleged she had a $50,000-a-month shopping habit. The divorce court judge says Brant "said he did not understand why she was paying retail at Bergdorf's when she could get clothes, at a discounted price, from the atelier in Paris of their friend, the designer Azzedine Alaïa, who Mr. Brant considers to be the best couture designer of the 20th century."

Do you hear that, Stephanie? Most of us would be so lucky to save money by wearing only Alaïa.

Stephanie Seymour, Peter Brant Divorce Case Reveals Lavish Lifestyle [Stamford Advocate]

• Stephanie Seymour's divorce from Peter Brant is getting even uglier. After police were called to the couple's home following Seymour's complaint that Brant's security assaulted her, Brant has accused the model of drug use and is seeking sole child custody:

• Brant alleged in court filings that Seymour sought treatment for Vicodin abuse, and subsequently became addicted to the drug Subutex, which is used to treat opiate addiction. He says Seymour has missed multiple court-required breathalyzer tests, and has twice submitted urine samples that, though clean of Subutex, were too cold to meet the minimum valid temperature. The media mogul also says Seymour "broke in" to the couple's Florida mansion and removed $700,000 worth of items, all while the kids sat in a hotel in Connecticut. [NYP]
• When fashion goes Galt, you know we're in trouble. [TDB]
• Nanette Lepore, Michael Kors, Zac Posen, Anna Sui, Betsey Johnson, and that guy who was just endorsed by Barack Obama, whatsisname, Bill Thompson, will be on Seventh Avenue on Wednesday for a rally to save the New York Garment District. Twenty-five thousand people work in the district, and designers say they need their convenient access to sample houses and manufacturers it provides, but lax enforcement of existing zoning laws and competition from cheaper labor sources overseas have led the zone to dwindle. [NYDN]
• Not to be outdone, Mayor Bloomberg — whom some designers have criticized for failing to do enough to protect the garment district — is launching a fashion incubator program for 12 up-and-coming designers this fall. [NYP]
• Woody Allen is reportedly considering casting Adriana Lima in his new movie, which is set in Rio de Janeiro. Because he's "fascinated" by her beauty. [NYP]
• "My fashion advice is to have a flattering mirror at home and then forget about it," says Vivienne Westwood. The designer lives in Captain Cook's old house, and has never sold out to a larger company or a private investor, despite some offers. And some polite nos: reports Cathy Horyn, one backer in the 90s picked another designer instead. "They could have made money with me. They lost it. I'm a woman," says Westwood. "I'm like household management or whatever it is. I would never spend more than I have." [NYTimes]
• Tim Gunn has a cameo in the Sex And The City sequel. [E!]
• JMS, a brand owned by Hanes, is adding a dedicated plus-size apparel line to its existing plus-size offerings, which were mainly jeans and underwear. It'll be sold at Wal-Mart and the creative director promises "slimming seams, strategically placed pockets, freedom of movement and appropriate-weight materials." [WWD]
• Christian Louboutin, the designer who slimmed down Barbie's ankles when he had the chance to release a line of dolls under his own name, says he never meant to imply her ankles were big before. "Fat ankles she didn't have, she just could have had thinner ankles," explained Louboutin. Still digging, then. [WWD]
• Manolo Blahnik: "I hate celebrities. All those pointless girls — I won't name names, but you know who I mean. They are 'famous'. Ridiculous. I like women with style: actresses like Uma Thurman, icons like Audrey Hepburn. I like women with style to wear my shoes." [Vogue UK]
• Model Selita Ebanks joins Sinbad, Darryl Strawberry, and Cyndi Lauper in the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. [NYDN]
• Pat Field made a tote bag for Diet Coke to give away with purchase, which will be available later this month from Boots stores. [Daily Express]
• Erin Wasson, presumably to avoid her dreaded homelessness, makes an appearance in the fall J. Crew catalog. She eats a necklace in one shot. [Refinery29]
• Something called the Japan Jeans Association given the country's first lady, Miyuki Hatoyama, its Best Jeanist Award. (She shares it with a pop star and an actor.) Pleased, the 66-year-old Hatoyama said, "This is the prize I have long wished to win. I'm a jeans lover. I'm always putting on jeans as they're easy to wear." She also recalled that she and her husband were each wearing jeans when they met. [AFP]
• Gee, we're so glad reporter Giles Hattersley puts that nice boss, successful businesswoman, and maker of lovely shoes Tamara Mellon in her place in this hard-hitting profile. Apparently she smokes, wears "teensy" dresses, and altogether reminds Hattersley of "the heroine of some dicey Danielle Steel bonkathon." Can't have that. [ToL]
• Love Moschino, the Italian company's lower-priced clothing line, is adding accessories to its collection. [WWD]
• Georgia May Jagger, already having nabbed the Hudson Jeans campaign, is now the face of Rimmel cosmetics. [Telegraph]
• Yasmin le Bon's daily life: "If lunch is at home then I tend to eat up leftovers from the fridge. I'm the leftover queen. I can't help it. I might mix them into an omelette or throw them all into a soup. One of the children won't eat soups any more because she's worried what old food I've put in it. Simon's mother, Ann Marie, often comes round with homemade bread and cakes." [ToL]
• Alvin Ailey company dancers will wear Mark & James, Badgley Mischka's just-announced lower-priced line, to their season opening gala on December 2. [WWD]
• Henry Holland kinda maybe sorta wants to move to New York. "Every time I come, the need to live here becomes more and more urgent and I want to go home less and less. I spend my entire time here plotting about how I would do it." But even if he did cross the Atlantic, he says he would still show his line in London. [Grazia]
• The luxury market, once in free-fall, is still declining, just not as steeply as some analysts earlier expected. Instead of the overall 10% drop in luxury sales that had originally been forecast for 2009, analysts say the industry is on track for an 8% decline in sales. [WSJ]

• Creator of this season's mightiest shoes, Alexander McQueen, is suing Steve Madden. McQueen's lawyers say the only reason the Madden is a knock-off and not a pure counterfeit is the omission of the logo'd zipper pull. (L-R: McQueen, Madden.) [WWD]

• There are pictures and renderings of Domenico Dolce's just-bought $29 million Manhattan penthouse. It looks predictably lavish; it even has an elevator for the designer's car. [FWD]
• Christian Lacroix will design another day! Al Hassan Bin Al Nuaimi, a United Arab Emirates sheikh, has worked out a deal to buy the bankrupt company from its owners, the Falic Group. If the deal is approved by the French bankruptcy court, it is understood that the house will continue to produce the couture collection for which it had been known. [WWD]
• Strokes member Albert Hammond, Jr., finally has pictures of his suit line. It looks pretty snazzy, albeit laughably priced, at $2,100-$2,400. [Style.com]
• Before Mounir Moufarrige, the CEO of Ungaro, hired Lindsay Lohan as the house's "artistic director," he asked her how long she planned on spending in prison. That's due diligence! [ToL]
• Speaking of non-formally-trained designers: "I cannot drape. I mean I cannot cut patterns. But I know exactly what I want and where the shoulder should be and where the seams should be," says 70-year-old Carolina Herrera. "And it's the eye you have to have for the colours, to mix colours, or proportions ... It was born in me. Because I didn't go to fashion school." [Canadian Press]
• The mood among the American press at the Paris shows was said to be grim. Top editors were absent entirely, and those who did come to the continent were spending the hours between shows wrestling with decisions about the layoffs and budget cuts they will have to make upon their return. Every Condé Nast editor has been asked to reduce his or her budget by a quarter; layoffs are expected to begin tomorrow. [FWD]
• Some see signs of the budget cuts in the fact that Anna Wintour repeated an outfit three times in ten days. But she repeats outfits all the time. [CityFile]
• Since Prince is in Paris for fashion week anyway, he just announced two shows this week at the Grand Palais. [WWD]
• Hot on the heels of Claudia Schiffer's announced intention to visit Iraq comes news that Roberto Cavalli is going to Chechnya. [FWD]
  
• The staff at the Marikina Shoe Museum were able to save Imelda Marcos's footwear collection from the knee-high waters of the most recent Tropical Storm. Three hundred people may have died, and thousands may have been left homeless — but they got the shoes! [AP]
• Gavin James Bower, a Dazed & Confused intern who became a male model for two years, has written a book about his experiences, called Dazed & Aroused. He tells the Sun: "For all the press about female models being forced to conform to an unhealthy body image, and all the horror stories about apple diets and the like, the pressure to remain a certain 'look' is just the same for male models. It's just not talked about." [Sun]
• Lily Cole says acting is like walking a tightrope. "The good actor is the one who always has a moment when they nearly fall off." [Telegraph]
• Peter Brant, in divorce filings, alleges that Stephanie Seymour spends $50,000 a month on clothes. And also that she destroyed his Kentucky Derby trophy. [p6]
• Lucky Brand's holiday shopping bags are designed specially by Sir Peter Blake, the artist who did the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Guess we're over that whole hide-your-shopping-in-the-plain-paper-of-shame thing. Happy recession everybody! [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne is going to be sold only at J.C. Penney, starting next fall. [WSJ]
• Louis Vuitton says it's on track to rise over the holiday period. [Reuters]
• Carrefour, the French retail giant, denies it is even considering selling its Chinese and Latin American operations. Because, while troubled right now, those are growth markets. Rumors are flying that investor Bernard Arnault — the head of LVMH — to cut its losses in those regions. [WWD]

• The new single from a singer named Lola is actually a track by Jennifer Lopez.

The song, titled "Fresh out the Oven," features Pitbull and is something La Lopez did "for the streets." [NY Daily News]

• Mary-Kate Olsen could have played a socialite teen vampire on TV, except the CW failed to pick up the show Blue Bloods, based on the book by Melissa de la Cruz. [Gatecrasher]
• Ellen Page will produce and write an HBO comedy called Stitch N' Bitch with Alia Shawkat and Sean Tillman. "The show follows two painfully cool hipster girls as they relocate from Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood to Los Angeles' Silver Lake enclave in hopes of becoming artists — of any kind." [Reuters]
• The Russell Brand/Katy Perry romance is heating up: He texted her a love poem; she replied with a topless photo of herself. [Page Six]
• An Australian variety show has apologized for a skit involving singers parodying the Jackson Five and performing in blackface. Harry Connick Jr., who was a judge on the show, called the skit "disgusting." [AP]
• Carla Bruni claims she is in a never-ending "beauty contest" with the spouses of other world leaders; and considers Michelle Obama and Princess Letizia of Spain her rivals. [NY Daily News]
• All Hail Barbra Streisand, who beat Mariah Carey on the Billboard chart. [Ny Daily News]
• An "insider" tells the National Enquirer that Mackenzie Phillips worked as a "jet-setting call girl" in her late 20s — when she was pregnant with her son Shane. [Daily Express]
• Madonna's buying Jesus Luz a £1.7 million apartment; she's not ready to move him into the house with her four kids, but she's looking for something in walking distance of her Upper East Side townhouse. [Telegraph]
• Conan O'Brien and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have been feuding over the last two weeks, but Booker is ready to "bury the hatchet." In a written statement, O'Brien said he may not be ready to abandon Newark as a joke topic: "I want to again reiterate, I have only the highest respect for Mayor Cory Booker and the city of Newark, New Jersey — one of America's oldest, greatest, and most enduring punchlines." [CNN]
• R. Kelly has revealed that he suffers from illiteracy. "When I was trying to make it out here, I already knew, and I was stubborn about it," he says. "I don't even read really and I'm not afraid to say that. My cousins and brothers used to tease me 'you can't even read right. How you think you're going to come up?' The only reason I graduated from grammar school is because I had a great jump shot. I went to high school and [my teacher] told me 'you will one of the greatest writers of all time.' I believed. You [have to] believe it. You can't believe [anything] if you're hating. You can't achieve [anything] if you're hating." [AOL Music]
• Gloria Allred is accusing David Letterman of "sexual favoritism." [MSNBC]
• Remember when Joe Francis attacked Jayde Nicole in a club? Apparently the incident was caught on a security cam video. You definitely see him drag her off of a barstool by the hair. [Radar Online]
• Michael Vick is getting his own show on BET. It's a "docu-series" spotlighting his comeback in football and also his difficult childhood and dog-fighting ring bust. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Kate Gosselin made fun of her mommy image in a skit on Jay Leno's show last night, telling photographers, "Leave me alone. Hey, what did Mommy say? I asked you to stop taking pictures and you continued… Go to your room," [ET]
• "Jon Gosselin: Kate is 'trying to prevent me from seeing my kids on their birthday.'" Eyeroll. [NY Daily News]
• Sponsors don't seem to give a shit that David Letterman hooked up with employees — there was a Disney commercial during his Tuesday show. [NY Times]
• Beastie Boy Adam Yauch had a cancerous tumor removed from his left parotid gland and says, "I'm taking Tibetan medicine and at the recommendation of the Tibetan doctors I've been eating a vegan/organic diet. I'm feeling healthy, strong and hopeful that I've beaten this thing, but of course time will tell." [TMZ]
• Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman are in the Broadway production of David Mamet's Oleanna. Stiles says: "I feel like Carol is one of the more well developed female parts he's written. There's something so interesting to me about how relentless and confrontational Carol is. For better or worse she's a force to be reckoned with. David Mamet is really good at writing characters that are flawed. There's something so fascinating about them in their bluntness." [NY Times]
• LisaRaye's new reality show will tell unflattering stories about Star Jones, Vivica A. Fox, and more. [Gatecrasher]
• "Prosecutors have declined to press charges against the sheriff's deputy who arrested Mel Gibson three years ago, citing a lack of proof he leaked details about the case." [AP]
• Alicia Keys is starting a new company, featuring a range of products; first up is The Barber's Daughters, handcrafted jewelry engraved with messages of hope. [Mirror]
• Stephanie Seymour's going through a divorce, and husband Peter Brant says she spent $50,000 a month on new clothes alone. [Gatecrasher]
• Matt Lucas's ex, Kevin McGee, who hanged himself Monday, had recently confessed his suicidal thoughts to a stranger at a gay bar. [The Sun]
• In the entertaining piece at the link, Phyllida Law — Emma Thompson's mother — talks about her daughter's struggle to have children, her adopted son from Rwanda, and her hoarding habit. [Daily Mail]
• Is Antonia Kidman getting married at her sister Nicole Kidman's estate in Sutton Forest, New South Wales, Australia? [News.com.au]
• Michael Sheen (The Queen, Frost Nixon, Underworld) plays legendary self-destructive soccer manager Brian Clough in a film called The Damned United, which is being called Sheen's "best performance of his big-screen career." [USA Today]
• Oh, yeah, and Michael Sheen also plays an Italian vampire in New Moon. But you already knew that. Twihard. [USA Today]
• Whatshername, the cagefighter, crossdressing, etc. [The Sun]
• "I love Susie Greene - she is so freeing. I analyze things from every which way. She just reacts without any kind of censor. Everything is an indignity, and she is absolutely sure of herself in every single response. All those doubts held me back for years: I wasn't good enough, I wasn't pretty enough, is this the right dress to wear? Susie Greene thinks she is drop-dead gorgeous and everything she chooses to put on is drop-dead gorgeous. Imagine being like that." — Susie Essman on her Curb Your Enthusiasm character. [NY Times]
• Q: What's your take on the Letterman sex scandal? Many people feel it's hypocrisy for him to throw darts at other's sexual misconduct when he's apparently been no better.
  A: "Here's the difference. A — it's his job to do that. And B — it just shows people don't really know what the story's about, which is the extortion. It has nothing to do with sex. And we're idiots when it comes to sexuality. We still think if you're single, you're a slut, you're awful! You should get married. People have sex! That's it. It's not the end of the world. It's really no big deal." — comedian Lewis Black. [Reuters]
• "Heath was just so full of ideas and fresh dialogue and so unbelievably fast and inventive. He was still, in some sense, speeding from playing The Joker, which had liberated him in a way that he had never experienced before. He was always telling me 'I am doing things in scenes that I didn't know was inside me. I cannot believe it.'" director Terry Gilliam, who cast Heath Ledger in The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus. [Mirror]
• Check out Heath in a trailer at the link. [NY Daily News]
• "We gave our blessing. We decided that it was so touching and that it should go on the air. It was a wonderful testament to the work Adam did. I only wish he were here to help so many more." — DJ AM's mother, Andrea Gross, who decided that his show should go on the air on MTV. [TMZ]
• "I don't know how to swim. So, I never spent any time on a beach. That's the good news. The bad news is that if you are drowning, I cannot rescue you." — Bernadette Peters, at a skin cancer event. [Page Six]
• "I would do 20 Vicodin in a night. I was on my way out. I might have been 24 hours away from dying." — Robbie Williams. [The Sun]
• "She's a manifester, if there ever was one. First-rate manifester. Madonna makes things happen. Put Madonna up against any 23-year-old, she'll outwork them, outdance them, outperform them. The woman is broad. And, of course, here you go: I still love her. But she's retarded, too." — Guy Ritchie, to Esquire. [MSNBC Scoop]

• The details of Fashion's Night Out — aka Anna Wintour's Plan To Save Retail — have been announced. Over 700 stores in all five boroughs will be participating in events that range from sewing circles to cook-ins to rock shows:

• Celebs and designers who will be in attendance at the various festivities include Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, Francisco Costa, Manolo Blahnik, Isaac Mizrahi, Kate Mulleavy, Diane von Furstenberg, Liev Schreiber, Stephanie Seymour, and Anna Wintour herself. Although all the tee shirt customization and free music will be enough to drag us around to at least a few stores come September 10, we're also tremendously excited by the idea of taking salsa lessons taught by Juan Carlos Obando. [WWD]
• As is to be expected, Vogue is apparently attracting a lot of attention from cost-cutting consultants McKinsey. Dare we hope that McKinsey will shake things up at the tired mag, and shake them hard? In other Condé Nast news, Teen Vogue's very stylish accessories editor, Taylor Tomasi Hill, is leaving to take a position at Marie Claire. There are no plans to replace her. [Fashionista]
• Agent Provocateur is launching a new line of super-expensive lingerie it's calling couture. Agent Provocateur Soirée will launch with an in-season show at New York Fashion Week on September 9, and hit stores in November. Prices top £2450. [Elle UK]
• The second issue of Love is out, and it turns out the preview image that surfaced online last month actually is one of the covers — editor Katie Grand chose Alex Hartley, and 18-year-old bass player she found on the Internet, for one cover, and Sting spawn Coco Summer for the other. [Fashionologie]
• Katie Grand had 35 guests at her recent wedding. Thirty-five guests who finished 28 bottles of vodka. Our kid of woman. [ToL]
• Dasha Zhukova, the 28-year-old heiress, art gallerist, and Grand's replacement editor at Pop, is rumored to be pregnant by her 42-year-old boyfriend, Roman Abramovich. [P6]
• An image of Scarlett Johansson which might be part of the ad campaign for a Dolce & Gabbana perfume launching later this year has leaked. The perfume is called Rose The One, and the picture is very soft and rosy looking, plus Johansson is already confirmed to be the face of the scent, both of which are signs that point to yes. [SassyBella]
• Tori Spelling has launched a children's clothing range. Little Maven will cost $26-$88, and is designed for kids up to 4 years of age. [Daily Mail]
• Naomi Campbell and Queen Rania of Jordan were introduced while holidaying in the south of France. There's no word on what they discussed upon meeting. [Daily Mail]
• The mayor of Kennesaw, Georgia, which is male model Sean O'Pry's hometown, is today giving the 20-year-old an official proclamation, because O'Pry speaks highly of Kennesaw in the interviews he does between gigs for Armani and Calvin Klein. [P6]
• Comme des Garçons and Converse are giving their collaboration wider distribution this fall. Four styles of the Comme des Garçons-designed sneakers will go on sale in select cities at the end of this month, and worldwide in October, for $100 a pop. [WWD]
• When asked about the person who irrevocably changed the way she looked at fashion, Heidi Klum generously named Karl Lagerfeld, despite the designer's stated dislike of her. [Newsweek]
• Everybody is wearing Lolita glasses. And by everybody, we mean Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Katy Perry, Nicole Richie, Kelly Osbourne, and Kim Kardashian. Clearly we ought to be wearing them, too. Or something. [NYDN]
• If you are a man who wants to buy Levi's jeans that are "re-created using the original techniques from 1873" for $395, you can do so, at J. Crew's downtown men's stores. [WWD]
• Riam Dean, the young woman who was asked to work in the stockroom by Abercrombie & Fitch because of her prosthetic arm, has sold the full, terrible story of her experience of discrimination to the Daily Mail. Dean says the £9,000 she won from the company in damages hasn't covered her legal fees. [Daily Mail]
• Hats are back, again. This story gets re-written every six months. [WSJ]
• The alligator "harvest" begins later on this month in Florida, but wildlife experts expect the number of the creatures that will end up as purses this year to be drastically reduced: while revenue from alligator skins topped $71 million in Florida in 2007, a mere $10 million is this year's industry estimate. What doesn't make sense about all these stories about exotic skins, whether alligator, crocodile, or python, losing their marketplace appeal, is the fact that among luxury categories, the bridge products — wallets, keychains, and other "aspirational" branded baubles — are the ones that are experiencing the steepest decline in sales. Brands from Hermès to Louis Vuitton have reported that their most expensive offerings, like exotic skinned bags, are still experiencing strong sales — if not actually leading sales across the whole brand. So what gives? Are the pythons and gators going to be left to their own devices in the Everglades this season, or not? [MSNBC]
• H&M's same-store sales fell 3% on last year during the month of July; analysts had expected a more modest 1% drop, since the fast fashion chain has been performing relatively well in the recession so far. [Reuters]
• Following another disastrous quarterly result, Abercrombie has announced it plans to further cut its prices. [WSJ]
• Escada USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, one day after the German parent company opened bankruptcy proceedings there. [WWD]

Karen Mulder was a blonde 5'10" Dutch teenager who shot to fame after a friend sent in pictures of her to the Elite agency's famous Elite Model Look competition. Within two years, Mulder had given up high school to work full-time for clients like Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, and Versace. She made the covers of British Vogue, Italian Vogue, and various international editions of Elle, among many other magazines. At 21, she bagged a multimillion-dollar multiyear contract with Guess? She was picked as one of Peter Lindbergh's iconic gaggle of leather-clad biker supermodels in American Vogue in 1991, when DUMBO was still thought of as a little dangerous.

That's Mulder second from the right, between Stephanie Seymour and Naomi Campbell. Her career, still managed by Elite, flourished through the 1990s. Mulder capitalized on her wholesome look with commercial gigs, like her two appearances in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition, and she became a Victoria's Secret model. There was a Karen Mulder doll, made by Hasbro. Mulder dated a racecar driver, she dated Prince Albert II of Monaco, she dated a real-estate developer named Jean-Yves Le Fur. They broke up, but it was still Le Fur who picked her up off the floor of her Paris apartment and called the ambulance in the winter of 2002, after Mulder attempted suicide by overdosing on pain pills.

The suicide attempt and the coma she would lie in for two days following it came after Mulder had told the press, "From the beginning, I hated being photographed. For me, it was just an assumed role, and in the end, I didn't know who I really was as a person. Everybody was saying to me, 'Hi, you're fantastic.' But inside, I felt worse from day to day." It came after she laid a formal rape complaint in France against Prince Albert. It came after she said, "My job distracted me from my worries. It enabled me not to be myself, to pretend I was someone else." It came after a notorious appearance on French television where her various claims — that men at Elite had raped her, that she had been coerced into having sex to garner better contracts, that Elite had used her and other models as sex slaves in a ring that extended through the top echelons of French society, implicating politicians, members of the police, and other top officials, that her own father had raped her, that she had been sexually abused by a family friend from the age of 2, that she had been hypnotized and raped, kidnapped and raped, and raped some more — were regarded as so potentially libelous that France 2 not only never aired the segment, but destroyed the master tape. No matter: In a series of more-or-less coherent magazine interviews, Mulder repeated most of her accusations, and added that her agency had encouraged her to use cocaine and heroin. She told the Daily Mail, "They tried to turn me into a prostitute because they thought it would be so easy. I was raped by two bookers. I reported them and they were fired. Another time I was shut in the office of [a high-profile man from the modeling world] for a whole day. All these people who betrayed me I used to love very much. Then I realized how big the conspiracy was. It brought in the government and police, who both used Elite girls. People have tried to kidnap and poison me."

Her suicide attempt came after she was packed off to Montsouris hospital and heavily sedated for five months of treatment for depression and anxiety. (Gerald Marie, the head of Elite Paris and one of the men Mulder had accused of raping her, paid.) It came after Marie was filmed on hidden camera by the BBC trying to give a 15-year-old model £300 for sex, and bragging of how many entrants to the Elite Model Look competition — average age 15 — he was going to sleep with that year. It came after Mulder's attempt at a crossover music career resulted in the release of a cover of "I Am What I Am", which peaked at number 13 on the French pop charts in the summer of 2002. It was after recanting all her rape accusations, and explaining that she was in fact dealing with the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse and had "gone overboard," that the former supermodel tried to kill herself. Since emerging from hospital, and until her arrest yesterday, Mulder has kept a low profile.

How a woman like Mulder, one of those people who journalists are always quick to say "has it all," could fall so far, so fast is not really the question that commands interest here. We all know this story: it's got drugs in it, and predatory older men, and very young women, and the abject self-consciousness of the individual whose worth is in her pictures. It's always more or less the same story, even if Mulder, with her recantations and paranoid stories of kidnapping and poison at the hands of a shadowy "they," isn't always its most credible narrator. It's the story of Wallis Franken, of Ruslana Korshunova, of Katoucha Niane.

It's the story presented in a 60 Minutes segment from 1988 that reported, according to author Ian Halperin, "about the many models who had been drugged, raped, and sexually harassed by the world's top agency owners." (Halperin characterized the segment as "shocking.") It's the story of the BBC's undercover documentary of Elite executives offering to pimp out their models for drugs. (This was seen as "alarming" and "surprising.") It's the story models like Sena Cech are telling when they talk about being coerced into sex by photographers and clients at castings and on the job. (These accounts, and model Sara Ziff's documentary that provides one vehicle for them, were described in the Observer by writer Louise France as both "shocking" and "surprising.")

What amazes even more than how little the story actually differs from telling to telling, how fundamentally the same its elements remain, is our capacity for disbelief. It takes a certain dedication to one's own credulity to insist on being "surprised," "alarmed" and "shocked" by a situation that has been the subject of interest from such under-the-radar media venues as 60 Minutes going back a generation. As a culture, we have so far managed, through every news story and blog post and exposé, to maintain an innocence of the realities of the modeling industry that is almost touching. Or nearly culpable.

Our persistent willingness to be taken aback by the notion that wealthy, powerful, older men, when left in charge of a younger, poorer, female workforce, might generally act as something less than gentlemen, is testament to the power the multibillion-dollar fashion industry wields as an expert creator of narratives. It's this attitude of disbelief that allows agency directors to claim they had no idea some of their models were using cocaine and that some of their bookers were dealing it to them, or that some photographers like to sleep with models and some bookers encourage models to go along with it. Our endless capacity for shock is what gets Karen Mulder sedated and lets Gerald Marie retain, to this day, his position as head of Elite Paris.

The longer we keep up our charade of disbelief, the less the industry will change. One of the most chilling scenes in Sara Ziff's documentary, Picture Me, didn't make the final cut. A model was talking about a photo shoot that took place she was 16, with what Ziff has described as "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names." When the girl left the studio to go to the bathroom between shots, the photographer cornered her in the hall. Then he started touching her dress. "But you're used to this," Ziff reported he said. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then the world-famous photographer put his hand to her crotch and forced his fingers into her vagina. The teenager, who had never even kissed anyone before, just froze and waited for the man to walk away. They finished the shoot, and she never told anyone. The day before the New York premiere, she begged for the scene to be cut.

But more and more models are speaking out. (I have.) If only we can dispense with our "shock" at what they have to say, perhaps this is an industry where some realistic chance for improvement remains.

Supermodel Karen Mulder Arrested For Threatening To Attack Plastic Surgeon
"We Need To See You Without Your Bra, He Told Me. I Was 14. I Didn't Even Have Breasts Yet."

Earlier: The Not-Rape Epidemic: The Modeling Industry Is Anything But Immune
Suicide And Abuse In Fashion's Top Echelon
Ruslana Korshynova, No Longer Anonymous

• Stephanie Seymour's divorce from Peter Brant just got ugly: security guards hired by Brant to protect the family home allegedly assaulted the model and pushed her through a screen door. Police have been called to the house twice. [E!]

• Fashion plate Kanye West, on his "wardrobe staple" Air Yeezy sneakers: "When I was designing these, I was inspired by the combination of materials used on the Fendi 'Spy' bags, as well as the colorways used on the robots in Robotech — muted tones accented with a pop of color. And of course we referenced the Nike mag from Back To The Future II. We're trying to bring kids into the future with this shoe." Doing the Lord's own work, this guy. [Style.com]
• Emma Watson was reportedly fine with appearing in a risqué W magazine shoot, but Harry Potter producers thought it wasn't appropriate for her character's image, so they forced the magazine to tone down the concept. [Daily Mail]
• Chloë Sevigny is hinting that she's in a collaborative mood. "I'd like to do something with a high-end company. You know, the way that Sofia Coppola did with Louis Vuitton. I thought it was very cool. There were no labels on anything. I like that. I prefer it." Her dream partner? Hermès. In which case, the actress might have to keep dreaming. [Style.com]
• Three-year-old Suri Cruise: Is cute, wears clothes. [Mirror]
• As had been expected, Versace C.E.O. Giancarlo di Risio tendered his resignation on Friday. [WSJ]
• Fellow former model Ines de la Fressange says Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is making her husband watch Italian films. "It's great for French culture that Sarkozy's watching Visconti and Fellini!" [Times of London]
• Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards event organizers KCD productions have made nine short films, one for each nominee. Instead of pairing the designers Thakoon Panichgul, Jason Wu, Alexander Wang, Justin Giunta, Alejandro Ingelmo, Albertus Swanepoel, Patrick Ervell, Tim Hamilton and Robert Geller with models wearing their clothes, director Michael Palmieri and still photographer Jennifer Livingston matched the designers with editors from magazines like V and Harper's Bazaar. To see the films, unfortunately, you have to be at the CFDAs on June 15. [FWD]
• Zac Posen, foodie: "I love grocery shopping. I'm a produce fanatic...I cook three nights a week. After the Met Ball I went home and made whole wheat pasta and puff pastry!" [Fashionista]
• The designer is said to be cooking with chefs Giada de Laurentiis and Marcus Samuelsson at the Wine & Food Festival in New York this October. [P6]
• Posen also confirmed that he is working on a scripted television series, but that the project is in its early stages. And he said his Spring line will be partly inspired by Facebook. [The Cut]
• While the New York Post and other outlets eagerly reported the tidbit that Anna Wintour appeared at Jason Wu's resort show without her sunglasses, they (or their source) forgot to mention that Wintour hurriedly left the building four minutes before the show was scheduled to start. "She had a plane to catch," says a Vogue staffer. "But she saw Jason's entire collection earlier and really liked what she was looking at." Okay then. [FWD]
• Nicole Richie's House of Harlow 1960 line of jewelry is now available for online purchasing in the U.K. [Telegraph]
• Tommy Hilfiger's sales rose 21% in the first quarter of this year. [WWD]
• The houses of Lanvin and Chanel each contradicted reports that Alber Elbaz and Karl Lagerfeld would be leaving their positions, and Elbaz would be taking the reins at Chanel. All the best rumors get denied. [The Cut]
• Fashion writer Shane Watson connects the rise of preppy style — Michelle Obama-style cardigans, schoolboy blazers, loafers, crisp white shirts and ankle-grazing jeans — with the changing taste patterns of the recession. "It's the antibling look," she notes. [Times of London]
• A division of Men's Wearhouse was the highest bidder in an auction to buy the bankrupt Filene's Basement chain of discount department stores. [WWD]
• Analyst Frank Curzio rates Kenneth Cole as a stock to buy, because the retailer is cutting costs aggressively in order to improve its numbers. (Last quarter, the company lost $8.2 million, and same-store sales fell by 16%.) But now that good ol' Kenneth has eliminated 401(k) matching contributions... [TS]
• Tory Burch has given money to a foundation bearing her name which will extend credit to aspiring entrepreneurs who wouldn't qualify for bank loans. Accion, a microlender, will administer the loans. [WWD]
• Talbots acquired J. Jill for $517 million in 2006, but it just had to offload the brand for a mere $75 million. The buyer was a subsidiary of San Francisco-based private equity fund Golden Gate Capital. Talbots lost $560.7 million last year. [WWD]
• "New fashion copyright bill will let big companies own public domain designs and bury young, indie designers in legal costs." Well. That's an interesting take on legislation that would allow designers, big and small alike, legal recourse when their intellectual property is stolen. [BoingBoing]

I so wanted to love this exhibit. I'll admit that bias right from the start. I know first-hand what goes into a shoot, and the crucial animating energy of modeling — the performance that is part mute, still-frame acting, part own-stunt cojones (who do you think climbs South American rock faces without ropes, in couture? Lily Donaldson's double?), part pure, inexplicable presence — and I feel, frankly, that our contributions to the fashion industry and the discourse of images that the industry uses to represent itself to the world are often underreported and undersold. Getting up in the morning and transforming, convincingly, into the apotheosis of a photographer, designer, and stylist's only partly shared creative vision isn't easy.

And just now, after season upon season of most designers choosing to make their models look as inconspicuous, anonymous, and blandly interchangeable as possible on the runway and in advertising, after years in which the model has shrunk before our very eyes, the culture seems ripe for some kind of redress: a resurgence of individuality, a reassertion of personality. A return to the days when the casual fashionista — as opposed to only the dedicated indexer of Internet-derived fashion arcana — could at least tell us all apart. The theme of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute's brand-new and infinitely hyped "Model as Muse" exhibit, with its privileged understanding of the lowly clotheshorse's role in advancing fashion, seemed to promise a move in that direction.

What a terrible disappointment, then, to walk through the Tisch gallery on opening day and find an exhibit that was seemingly laid out with the goal of inspiring the utmost tedium in the viewer. I should have known as soon as I passed that terrible bit of tat with creepy Robo-Dovima in the entryway: the first corridor of photographs is lit with softboxes suspended from the ceiling. Softboxes. Photographic equipment illuminating exemplars of fashion photography! The single-entendre curation never lets up; the viewer is also subjected to such cheesy gestures as stepping literally through a velvet rope in order to enter the 1970s gallery. (Done up, naturally, to look like the basement of Studio 54, complete with unlit cigarettes.) It is difficult to concentrate on the beauty that surrounds when your ears are being assaulted with Alicia Bridges' "I Love The Nightlife" and your eyes with a tawdry-looking spread of yet more blank-faced mannequins, all decked out in truly atrocious wigs by fashion hairstylist Julien d'Ys.

I suspect even the curators, led by Costume Institute head Harold Koda, found their vision a little less than compelling: the exhibit often seems like the product of minds that occasionally wandered. In the wall copy, I spied the former model Anjelica Huston's name mis-spelled with a 'g', and I read twice within 30 seconds the phrase "attenuated limbs." (British model Karen Elson, in the 90s room, has "elegantly attenuated limbs," while American Stephanie Seymour, who closes out the 80s gallery, has "gracefully attenuated limbs.")

This Avedon photo of Lauren Hutton is what every American Apparel ad wants to be. And never will.

The exhibit proceeds dully, chronologically, through roughly the past 60 years of fashion history. The galleries dealing with each decade are separated by lines as clear as they are arbitrary; the Fifties, you see, was the decade of the Continent and Dior and Balenciaga, but then once the clock struck 12:01 on January 1, 1960, nobody made couture anymore, and Rudi Gernreich immediately put the obliging Peggy Moffitt in his monokini. Cue mod! (Cue the Who! On repeat!)

Veruschka, shot here for the August, 1968, issue of French Vogue by her then-lover, Franco Rubartelli, played a role in her shoots that today would be highly unusual for a model. She had significant input into, or sometimes even sole control, of the styling, the makeup, and the hair, and the images produced were generally collaborations between herself and the photographer.

It's hard to screw up showing quality fashion photography, framed on a wall. (Even the various viewer-insulting "contextual" gestures, like blaring pop music and the intrusive graffiti in the 90s room — perpetrated by hairdresser d'Ys, at Anna Wintour's instruction, which goes to show just how much control the noted museum patron has over the arts on display — do not entirely manage to quash the timeless beauty of, for example, Irving Penn's June 1950 Vogue cover shot of Jean Patchett. The presentation of the artifacts on the walls is fine. What I am still unclear about is the value of seeing the mannequin'd tableaux-morts featuring the actual designer clothes; if the point of this show is to celebrate models and their animating contributions to fashion and fashion photography, then, after seeing Veruschka in Yves Saint Laurent's safari collection, or Bert Stern's astonishing studio shot of Twiggy in the same designer's beaded midriff-dress, what end is served by seeing these same garments presented in dim exhibition suites, too far away to make out any detail of stitching or cut, on lifeless dummies that bear no resemblance to the women who once illuminated their beauty as articles of clothing? The safari dress as it hangs in the show isn't even styled properly. It lacks, in addition to Veruschka's firepower, its ring belt.

Even back in 1967, sample shoes didn't fit. Twiggy poses here, on her first trip to the U.S., for Vogue photographer Bert Stern.

If "Model as Muse" serves any useful purpose, it is to remind the viewer of fashion's headwaters, and of just how derivative fashion photography has become. In the first hall of the exhibit is Richard Avedon's iconic image of Sunny Harnett at the roulette table; in the last, is Stephen Meisel's 1998 version, with Carolyn Murphy. The elements are so much the same — blonde, cream dress, tuxedo'd gent, roulette — that the latter scrambles to rise to meet the criteria of "homage."

Sunny Harnett by Richard Avedon, for U.S. Harper's Bazaar, September, 1954.

In the 1960s suite, somewhere under the blaring of "My Generation" and the projected Qui Etes-Vous, Polly Magoo clip on repeat that overwhelms the room, there's a single page from the September, 1965 Harper's Bazaar.

Jean Shrimpton, by Richard Avedon.

It served to remind me of nothing so much as this Patrick Demarchelier image from last September's Vogue.

Catherine McNeil, by Patrick Demarchelier.

A picture of Lisa Taylor wearing Calvin Klein, by Helmut Newton for the May, 1975 issue of Vogue, hangs in the 1970s hall, near some mealy wall copy about 1970s gender roles. (A subject which any viewer would learn more about simply by pondering the viewer-viewed dynamic here between the languid, powerful-looking Taylor and the foregrounded male model, whose ass looks so unusually objectified.)

Lisa Taylor, by Helmut Newton.

Of course, as commenter LittleNemo pointed out last year when I posted a spread, Glen Luchford's September, 2008, Harper's Bazaar photo of Freja Beha Erichsen owes a debt to Newton.

Freja Beha Erichsen, by Glen Luchford.

This Demarchelier and the Luchford were not in the Met's show — the post-grunge years seem to be a curatorial afterthought, as they are represented in main by two outfits from a recent Louis Vuitton collection by principal exhibit sponsor Marc Jacobs and a bunch of pictures of Gisele Bundchen. But, whether all these archetypal images' latter-day derivations are physically present or not, you can only wander through these corridors for a matter of seconds before phrases like "anxiety of influence" come irrepressibly to mind.

It is, I am sure, not the reaction Koda, Wintour, Jacobs, and d'Ys would want. But these eminent lightweights, with their spraycans, their predilection for references to fictional movies about the industry, their ugly wigs and their uglier Nirvana soundtrack, their mis-spellings and their children's book fashion history — not to mention their craven elision of designer Azzedine Alaïa — did more than enough to earn it.

Perhaps someday a museum will be equal to mounting an intelligent investigation of the changing roles of fashion models, and fashion photography's relationship to the wider culture — its uneasily shifting placement on the continuum between high art and low commerce, between editorial content in magazines and clothes and makeup as we do them in everyday life. Perhaps someday, we'll see the model as muse. But that museum is not the Met, and that exhibition is not yet come.

The Model As Muse [Metropolitan Museum of Art]

Related: Alaïa Pulls His Dresses From The Met Gala [On The Runway]
Model As Veteran [NY Times]

• Eva Mendes, along with male model Jamie Dornan, are confirmed as the fall faces of Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Underwear. Steven Klein shot the campaigns. [WWD]

• At last night's Met ball, seven models and one designer were conspicuously absent. Azzedine Alaïa, the diminutive Tunisian-born designer whose relationship with his models, particularly the mega-famous 80s/90s supes, is so deep that most of them call him "papa," was not asked to be part of the Met's exhibition, themed "The Model as Muse." Because, explains curator Harold Koda, he assumed, without even checking, that Alaïa would not want to be in the exhibit. Although Alaïa made and fitted dresses for models including Stephanie Seymour, Naomi Campbell (who has been his muse for 23 years), Veronica Webb, and Linda Evangelista to attend the exhibit opening, when he found out that none of his work would be represented at the museum, he asked all his models not to attend. Which they were more than happy to do. "Azzedine has made my dress for every single ball," said Seymour. "I will still make my donation to the Met, but I won't be going." Koda, ball organizer Anna Wintour, and co-chair Marc Jacobs, whose company is sponsoring the event, are all very sorry indeed that the designer who has perhaps the most enduring links of all with his model-muses will not be included in the show about designers, models, and muses. But none of them admit a whit of responsibility, which leads me to point out here, that Azzedine Alaïa, like Dries van Noten and a handful of other successful designers, doesn't produce campaigns. Armani and Versace, the two designers who dominate the 80s section of the exhibit, regularly lavish Vogue with their advertising dollars. [On The Runway & On The Runway]
• Of the event itself, the Times writes: "Asked how she felt about being a museum-worthy muse, Ms. Moss shrugged and pulled a big piece of gum out of her mouth. 'I'm amused,' she said. 'I think it's quite interesting for somebody to go outside of the box and think that a model actually has had some input into fashion. A lot of the time, the models don't really get a say.'" [NY Times]
• Significantly more enthusiastic was André Leon Talley, who, upon his first sighting of Moss, was heard to shriek "Goddess!" [WWD Twitter]
• Today, Chanel launches its new ad for its No. 5 perfume, a video by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, starring Audrey Tautou. In honor of the momentous occasion, the stretch of Fifth Avenue that borders Saks will be renamed "Avenue No 5" and the department store's windows will be dressed to celebrate the ad. [Racked]
• Jason Wu gives New York magazine a tour of the modest West 37th St. one-bedroom, decorated all in gray, that his family bought him after he moved to New York. The designer relaxes by cooking dinners for his friends. In between, he clears off the kitchen bench to design his FAO Schwartz range of dolls. [NYMag]
• Elle MacPherson's style icons are Steve McQueen and Katharine Hepburn. She also name-drops Banjo and Matilda cashmere, "an Australian brand," without specifying that it's owned by her brother and sister-in-law. [Independent]
• Marc Jacobs: "If you have five minutes free in New York, you're a failure. If you have five minutes free in Paris, you're a success." [Glamour]
• Stella McCartney has been making appearances at Barneys left and right; she's doing two more before the week is out. And her 23-piece collection for Net-a-porter goes on sale today. [WWD]
• Miuccia Prada loves her Carston Höller office slide, contemporary art, and Earl Grey tea. And being different. "I always want to be different, as a way to progress. At the beginning, I wanted to make a soft bag out of stiff leather. I wanted to make rich materials look poor, and poor materials look rich. Always there was something disturbing. In the end, that's probably why people like Prada." [Telegraph]
• American Apparel's witness list for its upcoming court date with Woody Allen includes Allen's ex, Mia Farrow, his current wife and Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, and Larry Flynt. [Reuters]
• Conflicting reports about Liz Claiborne today: while just last week Racked was reporting that, gee, an awful lot of the new Isaac Mizrahi-designed clothes seemed to be already needing heavy discounts on the website to move, today, Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to a "buy," partly due to the company's leaner inventories. Share prices rose 30%, to $6.46, following the news. [Crain's]
• In this economy, retailers are trying "positive thinking." Because it's all they have left! Ha ha, I'm kidding. But only a little. [WWD]
• Adidas needs to save 100 million Euros this year. To that end, it's closing regional offices in Europe and Asia, and has not ruled out shutting retail stores. [NY Times]
• J. Crew's children's line, Crewcuts, now has its own standalone catalog. [WWD]
• Estée Lauder's profits fell 70% in the third quarter, so now they're touting the brand as a good option for bargain-hunters. There'll be more free services at the cosmetics counter, and smaller-size products that'll be priced to scale. But probably still expensive. [WSJ]
• Kathy Ireland thinks the media obsession with women's bodies is ridiculous, and that the focus on how we look, as opposed to our health, is misdirected. Because bodies are for living in, not looking at. "Beautiful people come in all shapes and sizes, ages and colors," Ireland told Larry King. "With my weight gain, people wanted to know, Well, when is she going to squeeze back into a bikini? No. That is not what it's about. But what people weren't asking me [was], What's the triglyceride level? What is the C reactive protein?...Heart disease is the number one killer of women in America." [CNN]

• Marc Jacobs and his Brazilian fiancé, Lorenzo Martone, are set to marry next month in Provincetown. Also, Jacobs is taking the artists John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, plus Madonna, to the Met ball. [FWD]

• But Jesus Luz won't be in his fall Louis Vuitton campaign. "Why is everyone asking me about him? He's not modeling for me. I don't do menswear," said the designer. He did say, however, that Madonna and Steven Meisel are shooting the campaign right now, right here in New York. "She's the ultimate professional and she and Steven are amazing. I love working with her. There's no one better." [The Cut]
• Steven Alan, on this one time he opened a barbershop: "My mom was getting her haircut at this hairdresser's in the East Village, and the lady told her she was interested in opening her own salon, so my mom goes, 'Oh you should talk to my son!' And I'm like, 'Mom, I'm not opening a hair salon.' And she goes, well you should meet her anyway. So I met her and I was like, 'If I open anything it's going to be a barber shop,' and she was like, 'Ok, I can cut guys' hair.'" [Fashionista]
• Lanvin's Alber Elbaz — who seemed talented, fretful and difficult in Ariel Levy's recent New Yorker profile — is questioned by Stephanie Seymour in the new issue of Interview. "We really started from scratch eight years ago at Lanvin. It's the oldest couture house in the world, but when I came onboard, it was a great name without much in it. We slowly moved in. I love coffee, but I always say not everything has to be instant. We took the time. It took eight years to move from 15 accounts to 400 accounts. What's important is to maintain it as a family business. It's very much like Interview, which you don't talk about as a group-it's a family. The nature of fashion is family. You see that at almost every house-it was owned first by a family. It wasn't owned by a bank. In fact, the bankers went into fashion later...And look what happened to fashion!" [Interview]
• Alexander Wang, last year's Vogue CFDA fashion fund award-winner, is teaming up with the Gap. And unlike in previous years, where the CFDA designers re-imagined the retailer's white shirt — with mixed results — Wang has done something that sounds kind of exciting. Says Gap designer Patrick Robinson: "This year it's with khaki. He did this incredible motorcycle jacket in khaki that's going to be under $100. It's coming out on June 16th, so get ready!" [Fashionologie]
• Thinker of deep thoughts Michael Kors wishes there were some kind of Spanx for men. It exists, Michael! [The Cut]
• All that lobbying from the First Lady's favorite designers must have worked: a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House has reintroduced a modified version of the design piracy bill. [WWD]
• The ever-humble Isaac Mizrahi: "I just love women in dresses. Last night I was at an event at the Pier [in New York] and everyone looked just ugh ... except those wearing my clothes." [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• Soon, there will be Jessica Simpson lingerie. And sleepwear. Fantastic. [WWD]
• And Paris Hilton is doing sunglasses. [PopDirt]
• Anne Hathaway may not be doing the next Marc Jacobs campaign — but she looks good in her new ad for Lancôme perfume. [E! Online]
• WSJ. took Hilary Rhoda to Miami to shoot swimsuits, and shot this nifty behind-the-scenes video. No amount of overdubbed music can hide the fact that modeling is generally about making odd positions look natural. [WSJ]
• This list of the top 20 fashion Twitterers covers all the bases, but all you really need to know is: Fake. Karl. [Times of London]
• In a similar vein, Rachel Roy held a press conference via Twitter. She answered such hard-hitting lines of inquiry as, "Rachel, you absolutely glow! How do you stay confident through tough times?" Oh, the vaunted democracy of the Internet. [WWD]
• Revlon is launching a new mascara, and adding two items to its ColorStay product range. [WWD]
• Henri Bendel, the department store founded in 1895, is no longer going to sell clothes. The retailer will shrink its New York flagship by one floor, and concentrate only on selling accessories, beauty products, and gift items that leverage its brand and signature colors. Eight percent of its 250-strong workforce will be laid off. [NY Times]
• Timberland's profits declined 12% in the first quarter of this year. [WWD]
• Breaking: Tiffany & Co. has bought the bankrupt Lambertson Truex handbag brand from Samsonite. [WWD]
• Abercrombie & Fitch, meanwhile, is in its second round of layoffs this year. After making fifty workers at its Columbus, Ohio, headquarters in January, the company is letting go an addition 170 this week. [The Street]
• Joe's Jeans actually rose slightly in its sales and earnings for the first quarter. [WWD]
• The Gap is recalling 22,000 toggle coats for babies, up to size 24 months. The toggles can come off, and pose a choking risk. [Babble]

• Kohl's seems to think a Lauren Conrad fashion line will be a winner. And we had been so joyful when it seemed the Lauren Conrad Collection was taking a permanent vacation! [NY Times]

• Marc Jacobs: "If Naomi [Campbell] were very well behaved and always on time, and didn't have her little tantrums, I don't know that she'd still be around and traveling like Elizabeth Taylor with an entourage." I suppose you just have to find what works for you, and do it. [Style.com]
• Interesting tidbit from the set of the Prada fall campaign shoot: Steven Meisel worked for four days at Pier 59 studios in New York City — last season, the campaign was shot by Meisel in Los Angeles, but then a studio's a studio, more or less. And this season's undertaking involved an actual live horse. Can't wait to see how that turns out. [FWD]
• The New York Times finally got its Critical Shopper, Cintra Wilson, into Topshop (which, weeks after opening, still has a line outside and "bouncers" at the door — whether or not the shop is close to capacity). Wilson's take? "Everything looks so sarcastic and right-this-second trendy as to be planning for a near-immediate obsolescence." [NY Times]
• As had long been expected, Peter Copping was officially named Olivier Theyskens' successor at Nina Ricci in Paris. [WWD]
• New York asked Liya "Kibede" — May American Vogue cover girl, and the third black woman on the cover in as many months — to talk about fashion's cautiously increasing diversity, which the Ethiopian supermodel attributes in main to Barack and Michelle Obama. "I think there's a lot more black models working and I think that's because of having Michelle and Barack out there," says Kebede. "I mean there's been this issue, raised last year — how there wasn't enough black models on the runways — but I think Barack and Michelle have really helped us, hopefully forever, to get over this hurdle for black models." Three covers with black women in a row for Vogue is better than the one cover every 2-3 years that had been the norm for the twenty years of Anna Wintour's tenure at the magazine — but Vogue's 117-year history still counts only a mere 16 covers with black women featured solo, and 5 covers where a black woman was pictured as part of a group. We hate to say it, but Kebede's optimism may be premature. [The Cut]
• Tyra Banks announced that this season she was taking contestants on her watch-pretty-girls-cry TV show to Brazil by having a male model come on the set and offer her Brazil nuts in Portuguese. Unfortunately, that model's name was Hugo Vieira. Vieira is from Portugal. Not Brazil. [MadeInBrazil]
• Meanwhile, in the upcoming season of Australia's Next Top Model, a 16-year-old contestant, who took the preparatory step of dropping out of high school to jump-start her modeling career, is ordered into anger management counseling after threatening to assault another contestant. Seriously, where do they find these people? [News.com.au]
• Polymath (ADD?) designer Isaac Mizrahi was happy to be a judge on Bravo's Project Runway replacement, The Fashion Show (which premieres May 7). But not because it would lift his personal brand: "I respect people for doing that," Mizrahi said, tactfully, "but I'm doing it because it's really fun." [Variety]
• Jason Wu, despite his quick rise to household name status after it became known that he designed Michelle Obama's inaugural ball dress, is nevertheless still doing his quirky bread-and-butter sideline project: designing dolls. His latest is inspired by Lana Turner. It's for sale at FAO Schwartz, for $180. [FWD]
• Model-slash Daisy Lowe: "When I think of 'It Girl,' I think of someone who is privileged, someone who has everything given to them. My parents don't have loads of money. I've been looking after myself, paying my own way since I was 17." [Daily Beast]
• Patrick Robinson's quest to make the Gap cool (again? for the first time? can anyone remember? or is the Gap's alleged hip is beyond a sartorial event horizon: no information about it can reach the wider world?) takes on the jeans. Robinson and his design team have spent two years rethinking the chain's denim offerings, and come August there'll be new offerings like boyfriend jeans, well-fitted drainpipes, and bell bottoms in a variety of lengths. All for $69. [Style.com]
• Penelope Cruz's Mango line's summer collection looks pretty damn cute. As does Ms. Cruz herself. [Fabsugar]
• Yesterday, If we were to have ranked designers by their relative likelihood to launch homewares lines, Martin Margiela's name would have been near the bottom. Shows how much we know! [WWD]
• Quoth the artistic director of Shu Uemura: "I have so many ideas that it can be overwhelming." [The Cut]
• Four images from Shipley & Halmos' Uniqlo line, launching May 7, have leaked. The clothes look a little...boring. [Nylon]
• Matthew Williamson for H&M launches tomorrow in select stores. [Times of London]
• Could a Missoni for H&M line be on the horizon? Angela Missoni, creative director of the venerable Italian knitwear house, says in a recent profile, "I would like to do something with H&M because I think it is a very powerful way to reach younger girls now." Missoni is also frustrated by the format of modern runway shows, which she finds "cold and distant" and a distraction from the clothes. And she hates that more established models can command high runway fees: "I prefer to show my collections on fresh, young girls to capture that spirit. Having Naomi or Gisele in your show is really just about saying that you were able to get her." But girls like Nimue Smit — who is in the spring Prada campaign — and Sara Blomqvist — who was launched to fame by a Prada exclusive in 2007 — both of whom walked in Missoni's last show, aren't exactly "unknowns". [Telegraph]
• M by Missoni, the company's diffusion line, experienced 25% annual growth last year — so it's launching new accessories and denim collections. [WWD]
• H&M says it's strongly positioned, despite the troubled economy and its recent lackluster sales figures. The company plans to open 225 more stores than it will have to close this year. [WSJ]
• Here is your fashion inanity of the day: "Designers always say, 'Gray is the new black,' and the next season say, 'I can't do one more gray piece.' Where does it go? How come the loyalty vanishes? Why don't you love gray every season?" Stephanie Seymour — never afraid to ask the tough questions. [Fashionista]

• Versace model Liskula Cohen is suing Google after a blogger called her a "skank" and "old hag." Cohen hopes the defamation suit will unmask the mudslinger. [New York Daily News]

• Kanye West might be releasing a Louis Vuitton sneaker. We wish he'd stop being so lamely mysterious. [The Life Files]
• Monique Lhuillier and Naeem Khan are the latest designers to jump on the non-runway-show Fashion Week bandwagon. Cause who wants to be the insensitive designer throwing a show in these times? We all know an uber-select show in a small room is the way to fix the economy! [WSJ]
• First Lady Carla Bruni, at least, will be at Paris Fashion Week. [WWD]
• So, if you beat Stuart Weitzman in ping pong (which you won't, because he does "finger aerobics" and keeps his custom paddle in a silver case) you win a bunch of his shoes. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Talk about rags to riches! Model Daniela Cott, "who stands 5ft 10ins tall and has emerald green eyes, was spotted two years ago as she sifted through rubbish on the streets of Buenos Aires." Yes, she was fashionably gaunt! [Telegraph]
• Miss Vermont, Ashley Ruth Wheeler, will be wearing a green gown to the Miss America Pageant. The earth-friendly eco-frock will be made from hemp, organic cotton and silk, and lace and beads made from organic materials. No word yet on the swimsuit. [UPI]
• A new bra, designed for older and disabled women, has replaced tricky hooks with magnets. A boon for their suitors, too! [Science Daily]
• Diddy is king of his castle: "I need some advance notice because when I'm at home I'm really likely just to hang totally loose. I really like to just walk around in my underwear...I get a little embarrassed when people drop by; I'm not really prepared."[VogueUK]
• Stephanie Seymour for Valentino - part of the much ballyhooed 'year of the classic supermodel' —looks pretty amazing. [Fashion Week Daily]
• At least they can't be accused of false advertising: a new counterfeit shopping mall in China sells only knock-offs. [Mirror]
• This grotesque Roberto Cavalli snakeskin-print MasterCard was "created for those who thrive upon excellence, elegance and quality." [The Life Files]
• Los Angeles' 7 Showroom was robbed of $300,000 worth of merchandise on New Year’s Day. [WWD]
• Toni Chorley, a promising young model dubbed "the new Twiggy" when she came on the scene, has died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma at just 23. [Daily Mail]
• In a welcome piece of good retail news, fast fashion chain New Look reports that their numbers are up. [FT]
• Skechers launches (presumably fug) clothing line for kids. Sorry, that was uncalled-for. [WWD]
• Alfred Shaheen, credited as the inventor of the Hawaiian shirt that swept the mid-century nation, has passed away at 86. Aloha! [Reason]
• Now they say the first American TopShop is opening in March. Whatever. Fool us twice...[New York]
• Peaches Geldof has chopped her hair. It must be said: looks good. [ElleUK]

• Jessica Simpson's perfume is coming out. It's called "Fancy" and the following description doesn't even need to be parodied. '“Fancy is as alluring, feminine and romantic as Jessica Simpson herself. Her talent, charm and values have made her America’s sweetheart and have shown her to be the kind of person that women of all ages can admire,” Parlux chairman and CEO Neil Katz said in a statement.' Have at it, ladies! [Cosmetics News]
• Thakoon's new line is awesome. Which is good, because here's the part we really care about: they're doing a line for Target! [Glamour]
• Perhaps we underestimate Cavalli's influence? Kate Moss dropped from Grazia's best-dressed list. Maggie Gyllenhaal (yay!) is on it! [NY Mag]
• Wait. Victoria Beckham is showing at Fashion Week after all. "In the spirit of elitist designers like L'Wren Scott and Marchesa, Posh opted to show her frocks during New York Fashion Week to top editors and buyers by appointment only." Is this better or worse than a real show? [FabSugar]

• Proponent of sleaze, vertically-integrated manufacturing Dov Charney has lost his dog. Signs all over LA read: "Her Name is Hedkayce. I have had her for 10 years. She weighs 10lbs and has a scar on the left side of her face. She was left in the front yard of my home at 1809 Apex Ave. (Silverlake [sic] area). Please call at 213-923-7493 (cell) or my assistant Maria at 213-923-0616. ~ Dov Charney" [Racked]
• Fashion industry abandons plan to eliminate size zero models. "It has been shelved over claims of discrimination fears it could prevent models from working in this country, and a lack of support within the industry and from other fashion hotspots such as New York and Milan. " [Telegraph]
• Designer Ella Moss, known for cute, pricey, girly duds, to start making cute, pricey, girly swimwear. [WWD]
• There must be a dearth of real videographers around, otherwise why would model Coco Rocha be filming "behind the scenes" during fashion week for style.com? [Page Six]
• Zara (the #1 store in the world)'s fall and winter collex. [Telegraph]
• Intellectual fashionistas Rodarte up for a big award. [Style.com]
• Ann Taylor, mid-makeover, names new prez. [Wall Street Journal]
• Australian retailers/designers counting on the new Sydney Fashion Festival to get the dollars flowing. [News.com.au]
• Judge throws out L'Oreal's suit against eBay; the cosmetics giant was suing for the auction site's vending of knockoff cosmetics. [Wall Street Journal]
• More on that sleazy male model's kiss and tell: "Don't hit on the model whom the photographer has his eye on. If I couldn't figure out which girl he was going after," Hulse writes, "the likelihood was that he was coming after me." [BlackBook]
• Limited cuts a bunch of Limited Too stores, converts others to lower-end chain. [Wall Street Journal]
• Stephanie Seymour on the term "supermodel": "It's very embarrassing when you meet, like, a Russian prostitute, and she says she's a supermodel. And you're like, 'Hey, me too'," she told the World Entertainment News Network.' We, too, find it embarrassing when this happens.[VogueUK]

• For the love of God, please let Dolly Parton get her own makeup line. [Chic Report]
  
• The Pope hates expensive shit. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• "We're one of her favorite stores," says a spokeswoman for Henri Bendel of Shopaholic Isla Fisher. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• WTF? The New York Ranger's Sean Avery is interning at Vogue this summer? Maybe Anna Wintour can teach him some fashion closet cross-checking techniques. [WWD, 1st item]

• Pete Wentz on his favorite stores: "I love H&M and Urban Outfitters. I'm so not above shopping there or anything. They have such cool stuff and it's not expensive." [WWD, 5th item]
• For every one of Lauren Bush's FEED bags you buy at your local Whole Foods starting May 1, 100 kids in Rwanda can eat. Anya Hindmarch could learn a thing or two from Ms. Bush. [WWD, 2nd item]
• No, women really don't need special accessories to cover up their bulging belly buttons while pregnant. [LilSugar]
• Stephanie Seymour isn't just the new fashion editor at Interview, but the new face/body of Chantelle undergarments too. [Yahoo]
• Speaking of spokesmodel panty raids, Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown has signed on as the new face/body of Ultimo underwear. [a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/22/nmel122.xml">Telegraph]
• The latest trend for Australian boys? Wearing women's clothing. [News.com.au]
• D-list designer Anand Jon, who was charged with numerous counts of sexual abuse and rape has two new (female) defenders. [Hindu Times]

• "I go to the same Starbucks every day in Beverly Hills and they're like, 'Can you please tell them that we want to have new outfits?'...I sit in American Airlines, same thing. I get it all the time. Those chains or big companies, they always come to me." Imagine: the entire American service industry remade in the image of Heidi Klum! [Sassybella]
  
• Every time we read an interview with Kate Bosworth, she talks about high school and sort of ups the ante in terms of the profound alienation she supposedly felt there. Here's the latest installment. [Vogue UK]
  
• "Four kids later, I'm a 32D, but my entire life I was told I was a 34B." And there you have things we never wanted to know about model-cum-Interview fashion director Stephanie Seymour. [Chic Report]

• Best protest sign outside of the new John Varvatos store in the old CBGB's space: "$1,600 used jackets destroy communities." [Does someone still care about CBGB closing, is that the issue here? Because guess what, guys, there's a global food crisis on and Al Qaeda is bombing countries you've never heard of, stagflation is upon us and we're in danger of electing a president who doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite, so get over it, thanks. -Moe] [Fashion Week Daily]
• Fun contest! Giorgio Armani is sponsoring a contest where the little people can pitch him concepts for the new ad campaign for his latest fragrance. Ten finalists get to meet Mr. Armani, though only one will have their ideas usurped for the perpetuation of Mr. Armani's own wealth. [Vogue UK]
• Why isn't one of the options for this "Do You Wear Religious Symbols" poll "Only as tattoos"?! [FabSugar]
• "Wow! It just seems like the next step to our larger goal. Every time we conceive a collection, we try to think of all the elements that would go along with our designs. And bags are next! We want to conquer that next year," says Proenza Schouler's Lazaro Hernandez. Oh really, bags! What a novel idea. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Says Duckie Brown co-designer Steven Cox, "I've always had this fantasy of making a dress out of bricks." Aren't you just ill that Duckie Brown only does menswear? [Washington Post]
• Apparently there is no "right" hemline this season, but if there were, it would involve pairing a long skirt with a long sweater. We don't make the news, we just report on it! [Guardian]
• The color blue: It's important. [Washington Post]
• Showing off your baby bump is so totally out of fashion. Duh. [IHT]
• Crocs is shutting down its factory in Quebec City, meaning 669 people now are out of work. Which also means there is a whole new demographic of people who really hate Crocs! [NYT]
• I actually don't believe anything I read about ELLE's fledgling reality show (which may or may not be titled Fashionista) anymore, but some say that editors at the mag are calling in sick to avoid having to work on it. [Jossip]

• The new Marc Jacobs ads featuring Victoria Beckham have finally been made public. And they're awesome. Also: We seem to remember a certain Glamour magazine beauty editor who took to doing this with a Gucci bag. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Madonna swears that the Fox News reports aren't true and that she didn't screw Gucci over and trick them into hosting a fundraiser for the Kabbalah Centre of Los Angeles. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Giles Mendel's thoughts on Project Runway after serving as a guest judge on Wednesday night's episode: "OK...The authority of a TV show might not be good enough at the end to make a successful fashion house. That's a different ball game." Whoah — he didn't just question The Greatest Show on Earth, did he? [WWD, 5th item]

• Donna Karan on her experiences as a fashion student at Parsons: "Failed typing, failed draping, you know. I had a little ADD problem. Sewing? Oh, forget it. I burnt my dress. They told me I would never make it as a fashion designer at all." Oh, kooky Auntie Donna! It all worked out now, didn't it! [Page Six]
• Abercrombie & Fitch is launching a lingerie brand under a separate label, Gilly Hitch, and separate stand-alone stores. Given as A&F catalogs are supposed to be selling clothes and in reality, show models in their underwear, we can only assume that Gilly Hitch catalogs will feature models fucking each other naked. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Is it wrong that we're pulling for the success of the Joan Rivers makeup line? [BellaSugar]
• (Faux) rocker Bryan Adams is everywhere nowadays: He shot Tia Cibani's Ports 1961 presentation at the Chateau Marmont on Wednesday. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Betsey Johnson is starting up a separate line of outerwear. Lots of tulle and a corset on a raincoat, please.
• Narcisco Rodriguez's line is turning 10, and to celebrate ,the designer is doing a limited edition collection featuring 20 pieces celebrating the best of the line's history. [Chic Report]
• Fashion designer Bella Freud will be showing her upcoming collection via a short film. We're sure that great grandpappy Sigmund would have made some joke about screen memory. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Sign that Daria Werbowy is actually a good model: Even looks good in ad campaign for Pepe Jeans! [Vogue UK]
• Phillip Lim: now designing kiddie clothes. Which, to our dismay, makes us like Phillip Lim a tiny bit less. [Fashion Week Daily]
• The Missoni Spring 2008 ads: Scary. [Sassybella]
• Katherine Hamnett's "Clean Up Or Die" bags: Sure to be the next "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" bags. Sadly. [Vogue UK]
• Though it declared bankruptcy in 1999, Fruit of the Loom's insurance company had to cough up $42.5 million after the company got slammed with charges from the Environmental Protection Agency in regards to four of its factories. [UPI]
• Fruit of the Loom may be bankrupt, but the luxury underwear market's never been bigger! [Telegraph]
• St. Ives, they of the dorm-fave Apricot Scrub, has decided that maybe it needs to expand its brand and reach the oldies. Hence it's new line for "aging" women, named "Elements". Aging = women age 29 and up. Ouch. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Armani: now doing a skincare line for men! We wonder if the brand will find a way to tie the face of David Beckham into this one, too. [WWD, sub req'd]
• It saddens our hearts that there's already a waiting list for the Burberry Warrior Bag. Also, if you don't feel like shelling out $23,000 for it in it's croc skin glory, you can get a plain leather one for a mere $3,150. [WWD, 3rd item]

• Tim Gunn is taking some conflict-of-interest heat regarding a recent column he wrote OK! magazine. (Tim writes for OK!? How declasse!) When advising a reader about what jeans are best to fit most bodies, he steered the reader towards Liz Claiborne and Lucky Brand. Funny thing is, Gunn just happens to be the Chief Creative Officer of Liz Claiborne. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• The ads of David Beckham in his Emporio Armani undies don't hit the UK 'til March, but sales for white men's briefs have already gone up 50% since the announcement was made that Beckham's face (and balls) would be tied to the brand. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• Marc Jacobs on his camel toe costume: "I love being the unexpected, even if that means not moving for the entire night. You just kind of slide in from the front and hang out here. And the fur is all artificial of course, but there is simply too much of it!" Why are we not surprised that Jacobs would be anti-bush? [Fashion Week Daily]

• "I wear a piece of Jenni every day," says Skeletor/celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, referring to newly notable designer Jenni Kayne. [Fashion Week Daily]
• When we do spring cleaning, we end up hauling truckloads of old magazines and empty Kombucha bottles to the curb. When Karl Lagerfeld does spring cleaning, the items are curated and then put up for auction. [Vogue UK]
• Reverend Run's daughters have a clothing line. It is called Pastry. It is ugly. [FabSugar]
• Say what you will about Marc Jacobs, but at least he's using models (and good ones!) for the Louis Vuitton spring advertising campaign. Stephanie Seymour, Eva Herzigova, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Angela Lindvall and Natalia Vodianova are all set to star in the Richard Prince-inspired ads. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Uh oh: Why is Elle International Creative Director Gilles Bensimon sending out cryptic, vaguely suicidal-sounding e-mail "postcards" to his friends? [Fashion Week Daily]
• Stella McCartney has designed a pleather patent camera bag. It is actually pretty cute. But it's currently on sale for $400 (down from $1,235 originally), which seems like a fuckload of money for a bit of plastic. [GeekSugar]
• Kate Moss is the face of the spring Longchamp campaign. She looks hot. Yawn. [Sassybella]
• Martha Stewart's infamous former stockbroker/walker Peter Bacanovic is moving on past insider trading and into bling: He has just accepted the title of CEO of Fred Leighton jewelers. [WWD, 1st item]
• Krazy Karl: Thinking Russian for next year's Chanel metiers d'art collection. What would Lenin say? [WWD, 3rd item]
• John Galliano: Now doing jewelry. We really hope it's pirate-themed. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Anyone else find it interesting that not-seaweed yogawear line Lululemon's biggest competitors are Victoria's Secret, American Eagle, and Nike? [The Economist]