• Victoria Beckham opens up to Women's Wear Daily about everything from the childhood bullying she endured to why she couldn't bring herself to tell Marc Jacobs she was starting a fashion line. Clearly, someone wants to be Taken Seriously:

• And Beckham sure is a busy woman these days. Not only is she judging American Idol next month, bu she recently redesigned her denim and sunglass lines, after taking them in-house (the innovations she came up with include square rivets). And she chaperones school field trips in her (limited, we imagine) spare time. When she moved into fashion, people were derisive — surely she was just another celebrity cashing in on the brand of her self. But perhaps we got it wrong? "There have been people that have wanted to knock me that haven't been able to because they haven't been able to argue with the quality or the sell-throughs," says the star, who moves about $7.5 million worth of products a year. "I've always been driven. I was mentally and physically bullied when I was at school and that gave me a very thick skin.…The only reason for me bringing that up is I have always been a fighter." [WWD]
• Yet somehow we're still happier for this Bronx priest, Father Andrew O'Connor, whose sustainable cotton clothing line was worn by Cameron Diaz in Vogue and is now selling extremely well. A chance encounter set the wheels in motion: "I was helping a young woman and her fiancé prepare for their marriage," explains Father O'Connor, "and she said I'm an editor at Vogue; I'd really like to see your clothing line." In the resultant issue, Anna Wintour herself wrote in her Editor's letter, "the neat pair of checked shorts from the charitably minded fashion company Goods of Conscience [is] my personal favorite." The profits from the line fund domestic violence initiatives in the Bronx, and support the native Guatemalan communities where the fabric is woven. [NYDN]
• Matt Tyrnauer tells the long, horrifying, funny, and strange story of making and distributing a documentary film about a subject who could be — a little difficult. And Tyrnauer financed the film by taking out credit cards with 0% introductory APRs. Whenever Giancarlo Giammetti inquired about the production's cashflow, Tyrnauer would reply, "It's fully financed by a bank called Capital One." Valentino: The Last Emperor is now shortlisted for a Best Documentary Oscar. [TDB]
• Two men were found guilty of stealing more than £4 million worth of Cartier jewelry from an airport warehouse in 2001. They had apparently gotten away with it, but were found out when their third accomplice, a contestant on a reality TV series about cooking made by Jamie Oliver, contacted police to confess the crime last year. [BBC]
• Tune in tomorrow to watch Tom Ford on the Martha Stewart Show. Then on Thursday, Roberto Cavalli takes his mark at Martha's kitchen island. [Glamchic]
• Louis Vuitton's spring campaign does in fact feature Lara Stone, the company has confirmed. The Dutch model was shot in a pastoral studio set with white doves and handbags nestled into moss by Steven Meisel. [WWD]
• The February release of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland will be heralded in Paris by a display of one-off Alice-inspired dresses by designers Ann Demeulemeester, Christopher Kane, Alexander McQueen, and Martin Margiela (or at least whoever it is who designs under Martin Margiela's name these days) at the Printemps department store. [Elle UK]
• Daphne Guinness has officially moved from being Steven Klein's unpaid muse to his paid one. The heiress is featured in the spring Akris campaign. [WWD]
• Coach has filed more than 100 lawsuits against retailers it suspects of selling counterfeit Coach goods in 2009, including several lawsuits in Texas. Even though selling counterfeited goods is a criminal offense, the lawsuits are civil, because the fashion company wants the court to file injunctions against the offending retailers. One manager of a Fort Worth store named in the suit says, "I didn't know it was wrong." [DN]
• Barneys is looking to open its first Brooklyn Barneys Co-Op, most likely in Cobble Hill. [Crains]
• And in other retail news, the Chelsea Filene's Basement on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 18th Street will close this March, after the company was unable to renegotiate the terms of its lease. Seventy-five employees will be affected; the company could not say whether or not the workers would be transferred to Filene's other New York stores. It is looking for a new location nearby. [Crains]

• Alicia Keys has a jewelry line; her bangles and rings come engraved with the words of the Japanese pseudoscientist Masaru Emoto. You can't make this up. [WWD]
• Marie Claire has published some clear pictures of Rodarte's line for Target. [Nitrolicious]

• John Galliano's Christmas tree design for Claridge's is extraordinary and very weird. [Vogue UK]
• Madonna has rebounded from Louis Vuitton's decision not to re-hire her for a third season of ad campaigns rather well: she shot the spring Dolce & Gabbana campaign with Steven Klein in a Brooklyn studio on Friday. [WWD]
• Zac Posen has eliminated his public relations officer because of budget constraints. [WWD]
• Jamba Juice is getting into the rag trade. The maker of delicious smoothies thinks it can whip up "Jamba-inspired" t-shirts, sweatshirts, and headwear that everyone will want. No delivery date for the first collection was given. [BrandWeek]
• Express is suing Forever 21 for copyright violations concerning several plaid patterns, in what has to be the endgame for fashion originality. [WWD]
• Scarlett Johanson is apparently still doing ad campaigns for Mango. [FWD]
• Diane Von Furstenberg dropped a few dresses off with Ikram Goldman during a recent trip to Chicago. We all know what that means! [WWD]
• Thakoon Panichgul is now the creative director of the Japanese jewelry brand Tasaki. [Style.com]
• Tom Ford's profile in the Advocate is alternately touching, perhaps too revealing, and kind of crass — kind of like the man's designs. He opens up about his depression, his struggles with alcohol dependency, admits to chasing youth with Botox and Restylane, and how he once shaved his eyebrow off when he was on mescaline, but most fascinatingly of all, to our ears, is the revelation that in his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, he gave the main character a last name after his first boyfriend, Ian Falconer. Oh! Also there's this: "Yves and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery. I'd lived in France off and on and had always loved it. I went to college in France. It wasn't until I started working in France that I began to dislike it. They would call the fiscal police, and they would show up at our offices…They'd come marching in, and you had to let them in and they'd interview my secretary. And they can fine you and shut you down. Pierre was the one calling them. I've never talked about this on the record before, but it was an awful time for me. Pierre and Yves were just evil. So Yves Saint Laurent doesn't exist for me…I have letters from Yves Saint Laurent that are so mean you cannot even believe such vitriol is possible." [Advocate]
• Says Vogue/CDFA Fashion Fund finalist Flora Gill, of Ohne Titel: "My parents were always very supportive. They actually bought me books about Comme des Garçons when I was 8 years old, which I think is not…usual." Meet the other nine finalists in this video. [Style.com]
• Simon Fuller, who already holds a 51% stake in London's Storm Models, is rumored to be investigating setting up a New York agency. Posh is supposedly involved. This sounds awfully similar to the Simon-Fuller-and-Kate-Moss-are-going-to-found-an-agency rumor of a few months back. [Daily Mail]
• The woman who runs British lingerie brand Ultimo (current face: Peaches Geldof) noticed her 10-year-old daughter talking about going on a diet. So she has decided to ban excessive Photoshopping in Ultimo's advertising images. (Whether she'll ban the company from employing women like Peaches Geldof as role models is unanswered.) [Sun]
• Friday, Lady Gaga tweeted that she was visiting Nick Knight's Showstudio. The singer is apparently working with the fashion photographer/videographer on a video for her upcoming tour. The concept apparently involves "a veritable menagerie of animals." [Showstudio]
• Style.com ranked 2009's top fashion partiers; all the usual suspects — Olivier Zahm, Alex Wang, Lauren Santo-Domingo, Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, Leigh Lezark, Derek Blasberg, and Karl Lagerfeld — make the cut. But more importantly: can we never, ever refer to the Meatpacking District as "MePa" again? [Style.com]
• Cacharel, relaunched this October under Belgian designer Cedric Charlier, is returning to worldwide distribution in the spring. [WWD]
• And, just like that, it's over: Versace face, British Vogue cover model, Rimmel campaign-nabber Georgia May Jagger says she's quitting the biz. At least for the rest of the year: she's 17, so she has school, you know. [Vogue UK]
• Luella is closing. [Vogue UK]
• Former Gucci creative director Dawn Mello was allegedly run down by a bicycle messenger outside Bergdorf's. She has a shattered femur. [P6]

The tag line is — of course — "Be caught dead in it." But this is far from the first time fashion has sought to draw female customers with images of dead women.

Back in 2007, for "cycle" 8 of America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks had the cast pose as murder victims for a shoot. You can see the whole series of images here, should you want to.

But as in most things, Banks was just taking inspiration from a long-established fashion trend. Plenty of photographers have aestheticized violence. While this model in Steven Meisel's September, 2007, "Make Love Not War" spread for Vogue Italia might not be dead — yet — she's clearly pictured in the midst of a violent attack.

Is it better or worse that Steven Klein, for his part, spreads his depictions of violent death across gender lines? That's Kevin Federline, by the way.

Copyranter points to this Fall, 2006, Jimmy Choo campaign as another antecedent for the Superette images.

Not to mention this Duncan Quinn ad, which practically approaches snuff film territory.

Then there was this August, 2007, spread in W magazine, featuring model Doutzen Kroes.

Photographers Mart Alas & Marcus Piggott captured Kroes in a variety of poses that all strongly implied she had recently been the victim of violence.

You can see the rest of the creepy story at Glossed Over. So if this troubling theme isn't even original or "edgy," why are we still creating and consuming these images?

This is a Helmut Newton photograph from the early 90s.

How, as women's rights have increased and progress has been made in the West across every rubric of measurement, have we moved from fashion photography that, while still glamorizing violence, at least showed us as the ones with the guns, to an aesthetic that promotes death as the ultimate symbol of female subservience?

Dead Is The New Black, Again [Copyranter]

In a cover story (not available online) in the new issue of Rolling Stone, the pop star says that the pictures were intended for the cover of her latest album:

"I did a photo shoot with Steven Klein for my last album cover, and I painted my face black, except for red lips and white eyes. It was a play on words. Have you ever heard of the Black Madonna? It has layers of meaning, and for a minute, I thought it would be a fun title for my record. Then I thought, 'Twenty-five percent of the world might get this, probably less. It's not worth it.' It happens all the time, because my references are usually off the Richter scale. That's why I have people like Guy [Oseary, her manager] in my life who look at me and go, 'No, you are not doing that.'"

That album became Hard Candy, the cover of which was also shot by Klein, and those "Black Madonna" photos with their unspecified "layers of meaning" never saw the light of day.

Rolling Stone [Official Site]

Earlier: Fashion Photographer Steven Klein Has Done Blackface Before
Oh No The Didn't: French Vogue Does Blackface

A tipster with an enviable magazine collection pointed us to this spread, which is still viewable on the American photographer's website. (It's collected with his 2005 editorial work for the magazine.)

In addition to often exploring themes of sexual violence and power in his work, Klein has a certain habit of changing models' skin tones with makeup. In September, 2008, American Vogue printed an editorial that featured the white Brazilian model Caroline Trentini painted the color of burnt Cheetos; earlier this year, in some work for Vogue Paris, Klein had Dutch model Lara Stone posed with male models who were made up alternately in a deep tan, presumably to contrast with her very fair skin, or in matte yellow and red. This month, of course, it is Stone whom Klein photographed in blackface.

Racialicious ran a persuasive post earlier this week that argued that these kinds of images, where white women are made to appear black, actually further white privilege:

"[W]hat is on display in French Vogue...is not beautiful black bodies, but what Nirmal Puwar describes as 'the universal empty point' that white female bodies are able to occupy precisely because their bodies are racially unmarked."

Because as long as white remains the "default" race — the ethnicity that isn't — temporarily portraying them as black doesn't prove we live in a post-racial society: it just demonstrates that white people are permitted to play with racial categories in ways that people of color are generally not.

Also, there remains the issue of real black models, and the continued discrimination they face. Jourdan Dunn recently told Teen Vogue about being turned away from a casting at the last minute because the client had simply opted not to use any black models that season; although since we started counting models of color at New York Fashion Week, the level of overall diversity has improved, it is still very much a concern. The issue of Vogue Paris that featured Klein's blackface editorial with Stone, the so-called "Supermodels" issue, had no models of color.

This issue of Italian Vogue also had zero models of color in its editorial pages. None.

The fashion world's myopia when it comes to diversity — which is the underlying problem here — is also clouding some people's reactions to the Vogue Paris spread.

"I have a hard time reading 'race' into this," says a puzzled Teri Agins, the Wall Street Journal's veteran fashion reporter.

Elizabeth Gates, in an insightful essay, compares the Paris Vogue spread to "a modern minstrel show," but says, as a black woman working in fashion, she is utterly unsurprised by Steven Klein's photography and Carine Roitfeld's editorial choices: "I would be fooling myself if I thought the draftsmen behind fashion's most beautiful things were ever going to be sensitive to race, black women, or how they represent our cultural history. In fact, I'm not exactly sure why this was a shock to anyone." Elle's Anne Slowey admits, "It's an industry filled with people who have no idea about history and politics."

Maybe it's time to start learning.

Steven Klein [Official Website]
Blackface And The Violence Of Revulsion [Racialicious]
Back To Blackface [Daily Beast]
Duh! Of Course Fashion's Racist [Daily Beast]

Earlier: Oh No They Didn't: French Vogue Does Blackface
Self-Reflection: A Bizarre, Macabre Short Story Brought to You By Vogue
February French Vogue: Steven Klein Model Zombies & NSFW Nan Goldin
Fashion Week Runways Were Almost A Total Whitewash
How Did New York Fashion Week's 116 Shows Treat Models Of Color?

Reports the Daily Mail: "French Vogue said it was unaware it had caused offense, but said it could not give any further comment."

French Vogue Accused Of Racism After Painting White Model Black For Fashion Shoot [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Oh No They Didn't: French Vogue Does Blackface

In the October issue of the magazine is a 14-page editorial featuring the Dutch beauty. Shot by Steven Klein and styled by editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld, the piece starts off by praising Stone's "sensual" body, her "uninhibited gappy teeth" and the "radical break with the wave of anorexic models" that she supposedly represents. Too bad they changed everything they claim to love about her for the shoot.


What Klein and Roitfeld should know — as the producers of the Australian programHey, Hey, It's Saturday also should have known — is that painting white people black for the entertainment of other white people is offensive in ways that stand entirely apart from cultural context. France and Australia may not have the United States' particular history of minstrel shows as a form of popular entertainment going back to the 19th century, but something about the act of portraying a white woman as black ought to sound an alarm, somewhere.

The fact that the issue, dedicated to "Supermodels," contains no black models, should also have been noticed, and corrected.

Given Klein is American, it would be nearly impossible to even argue that the magazine didn't know what buttons it was pushing. It's kind of sickening to think that minstrelsy has become just another "reference" for po-mo fashion editorials to "appropriate" to show how "edgy" they are, "conceptually."

After painting Stone's body brown, the makeup artist then apparently painted parts of her white again.

Inexplicably, the editorial moves from the studio to a location.

The token Lady Gaga picture at least clears up one troubling question: why it is that Stone spends the editorial wearing only a black thong on her lower half. I looked at this editorial, and I just thought, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. When I got to this shot, I thought lame. Since when does Carine Roitfeld seem so out-of-date?

In forgetting the G on the cover, Vogue invited at least this one joke: voué à l'échec.

All scans via Laetitia at TFS

This October, 1943, cover, was Penn's first work for Vogue. He had only recently begun to work as an assistant to Alex Liberman, after failing to find himself as a painter. (Women's Wear Daily reports that when Penn gave up on his artist dreams, he "washed the paint from his canvases and kept them as table linens.") Liberman liked Penn, despite his lack of photographic experience, so he asked him to start suggesting cover concepts; Penn shot this with borrowed equipment. It's almost impossible to imagine a Vogue cover of today coming out of such spontaneity of talent.

Penn's best photographs have a timeless quality. There is a deep stillness in this 1949 image, "Summer Sleep," and an abstracted intimacy. Some of the photographer's best work was only published decades after he shot it.

His nude series is a perfect example. Penn wanted to step away from fashion, so in 1949, he went to Port-au-Prince, and started taking pictures of artists' models, instead of fashion models. "Nude 70" was shot during this period, and exhibited at the Met in 2002. Penn's work was, more than anything else, always about light and space, which he used as uncanny tools for describing the relationships between things.

Whereas Newton was raunchy and dark, and Avedon was frothy and light, Penn was more intensely interested in his subjects; he could even humanize the gaze of a dismembered turkey's eye. You can trace a fairly direct line of influence from Helmut Newton to Steven Klein, and from Richard Avedon to Stephen Meisel. If you're looking for echoes of Penn in contemporary fashion photography, you can often find the same sense of stillness, of precision, and of beauty rather than prettiness, in the work of Paolo Roversi and Sarah Moon.

And unlike a lot of artists, Irving Penn kept producing good work into his old age. This still life was published in 1999; while his exacting photos were seen less and less frequently in the pages of Vogue over the last few years, the ones that were published — like that anthropomorphized bird — were stop-in-your-tracks beautiful.

He may never have made it as a painter. But he did become an artist.

Photos:

Photography Now [Official Site]
Metropolitan Musem of Art [Official Site]
UK Vogue Cover Archive [Official Site]
Style.com [Official Site]

• Katie Holmes can add another feather to her designing cap: creative-directing new uniforms for the Church of Scientology. Holmes and Tom Cruise apparently had creative oversight of the religion's new threads, offering direction to designer Richard Tyler. [Daily Mail]

• For some reason, we literally had no idea that Daphne Guinness — Steven Klein's sometime subject, and a woman who brings exquisite creativity to dress — was Bernard-Henri Lévy's girlfriend. Lévy told her once, "You are no longer a person, you have become a concept." (Too bad he's married to the actress Arielle Dombasle.) [Telegraph]
• Market research company the NPD Group estimates that fully 12% of fashion industry vendors will not survive this recession. An additional 20% will abandon their expansion strategies, and retrench to focus on core markets and products. Sobering news for anyone who loves fashion. [WWD]
• Kate Moss and Scarlett Johansson, shilling for the supermodel's Topshop line and for Mango, respectively, ended up posing in awkward, sprawling positions, wearing grey sweaters and ripped black tights. Irrefutable evidence that when high street stores pick from a season's grab-bag of trends, their choices will inevitably sometimes coincide. [Stylefile]
• YLB, Yasmin Le Bon's line for the British fast-fashion chain Wallis, which targets middle-aged women, is apparently relatively demure — but still, she hopes, fashionable. As for her family, by the end of next month, Le Bon's eldest daughters, Amber and Saffron, will be 20 and 18, respectively. "I'll have two adults. In legal terms only! They can vote, but they can't do a lot else," says the supermodel. "No, they're great girls, they completely entertain us. But if I'd known how much heartache was in store... wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. It never stops. There's no cut-off point for your children, no matter how grown-up they are. It's a big deal." [ToL]
• Christie Brinkley, on an average Sunday morning: "If it's not raining, I'll go outside with my coffee with my parrot on my shoulder and wander around pinching the petunias. Then I read the newspaper." [NYTimes]
• Tory Burch did a Gossip Girl cameo because "It's a show that's very important in our culture right now." [FWD]
• Dunja Knezevic and Victoria Keon-Cohen, who in 2007 founded the world's first successful models' union in London, are about to set up the industry's first-ever code of conduct to protect models from exploitation. The kinds of behavior they want the code to regulate includes the usual list of complaints about sexual harassment, abuse by hair and makeup artists — the union received one complaint from a male model whose scalp bled because of peroxide — and dangerous practices like models being asked to risk their ankles by jumping on trampolines in high heels. Keon-Cohen and Knezevic both grew up in Australia, but make no mistake the duo's home country has no plans to take up their initiative and institute a similar code: "We are lucky in Australia that we have a small but very professional group of agencies providing a world-class service," said a snippy spokesperson for the Sydney agency Chic. [SMH]
• Meanwhile, in other model-activist news, Gloria Mika, a face of L'Oréal, is campaigning for free and fair elections in her native Gabon. Mika aims to recruit volunteer poll watchers online, and says the response to her website has been extraordinary. The 23-strong field of candidates for president is led by Ali Ben Bongo, the son of the recently deceased Omar Bongo, who ran the nation for 42 years and enriched himself dramatically in the process. [BBC]
• Apparently, three male celebrities wearing mostly gender-neutral items marketed towards women, like scarves, pouch bags, and "boyfriend" jackets, constitutes a trend toward "girlfriend" dressing. We're suspicious of this "trend," but we agree Jamie Hince should probably not wear Kate Moss's denim cutoffs again. [Telegraph]
• Elettra Weidemann, on Anna Wintour: "She's been doing this for so long, surrounded by men. There's absolutely a feminist aspect to her. I think a lot of the attacks against her are misogynist. Men in business are totally cutthroat and nobody says bad things about them for it." [The Cut]
• "A couple of years ago I thought to myself that I wanted to build a whole lifestyle brand and really educate people that anyone can have style. You don't need a lot of money." Rachel Zoe says one thing and means another. [USAToday]
• Europe's largest distributor of band t-shirts, Completely Independent Distribution, may soon have to drop the "independent" from its name: the music label giant EMI is considering a $500,000 bid for the company, as it seeks to diversify its revenue streams now that nobody buys CDs but concerts become increasingly profitable. [FT]
• One person who apparently isn't thrilled about Marc Jacobs' and Lorenzo Martone's rumored secret elopement to Provincetown, Massachussetts, this past weekend: Jacobs' ex, Jason Preston. The party promoter, who was once so devoted to his designer beau that he has his logo tattooed on his forearm, Twittered to Courtney Love on Friday, "I miss u love!!! I feel this is gunna b a VERY bad weekend 4me rumor around town is he's getting married this weekend. : (" [CityFile]
• One way of reaching consumers in emerging markets? Offering purchase by installment plan, as Levi's is doing in India. [FT]
• Sales at Ann Taylor fell 21% in the second quarter, and the company swung to a loss. The company, which this spring admitted its product lines had been dowdy, is hoping that new fall offerings — and a new ad campaign with Cameron Russell — will reel consumers back in. [WSJ]
• Marc Dreier's ponzi scheme defrauded $400 million, mainly from large investment funds, and Dreier was sentenced to 20 years in prison last month. But a number of fashion companies, including Nike, Adidas, Seven For All Mankind, Tommy Hilfiger, Rock & Republic, and Nautica, were also investors, who are now seeking to be repaid some of what Dreier took. [WWD]
• Charlotte Russe, which put itself up for sale in March, will be bought for $380 million by the private-equity firm Advent International Corp. [WSJ]

• Barneys' Simon Doonan: "Criticizing Ed Hardy for being cheesy is like saying that Elvis was 'flashy' or that Liberace was 'tacky.' It's a giant case of DUH! Of course it's cheesy! That's the whole point, you doo-doo heads." [NY Observer]

• "Ed Hardy is fromage-y and hedonistic and naughty and badass and-the ultimate crime in the world of haute fashion — Ed Hardy is FUN!" Doonan, in his entertaining op-ed dissection of the concept of "good taste," paused to riff on Christian Audigier's design efforts. "The unrestrained, bedazzled, heavy-metal-goes-Bollywood aesthetic rivals the gaudy heyday of Gianni Versace. Instead of knocking it, the style arbiters of the world should be grateful. Monsieur Audigier has done a real mitzvah to the insecure fashion cognoscenti: He has given them something about which to feel superior. If Ed Hardy did not exist, they would have to invent it in order to get their snooty fix." Also, "popped his sabots" is the best euphemism for dying, ever. [NYObs]
• Cynthia Rowley is starting a kids' line. [Stylelist]
• Comme des Garçons' Osaka store is inaugurating a floor that will serve as an art gallery with a show by Yayoi Kusama. [WWD]
• Kate Moss's fourth women's fragrance, Vintage, launches this September, and the ads are coming out now. [NowSmellThis]
• Apparently, when a woman cuts her hair after a breakup, that's called a "breakover." Who knew? [Glamour]
• All those who remember fondly the extraordinary 26-page Daphne Guinness spread from Vogue Italia's September, 2008, issue, rejoice: the couture-loving heiress and photographer Steven Klein have teamed up again, and have another 20+ page editorial coming in Vogue Italia's September issue. Guinness says this one will be "moodier" and is inspired by a cult French film from the 60s, though she won't name which one. [Style.com]
• "Everybody thought they had to spend money. They thought it was a new way of life. Now they're rubbing the dust out of their eyes. ‘I don't need that handbag. What was I doing?' " said a brave, but anonymous, Condé Nast editor to Cathy Horyn. [NYTimes]
• Christina Binkley of the Wall Street Journal reports on a well-known industry secret: that the same firms who supply raw materials, and in some cases manufacture, for high-end brands also sell the same items to more down-market brands. Binkley compares a $1,750 cardigan sweater made in Italy by the Quarano, Piedmont, wool company Loro Piano, and a $145 J. Crew cardigan "spun from supersoft, luxurious Italian cashmere from a world-famous mill in the foothills of Piedmont." Lesson: some less-expensive brands still take immense care in their sourcing. [WSJ]
• Which may just be why CFDA executive director Steven Kolb became a J. Crew fan on Facebook. [FWD]
• A gaggle of minor celebrities — some dude who was in a Britney Spears video, the guy from North Dakota who plays Emmett Cullen in Twilight, etc — availed themselves of a pre-season event at French Connection in Los Angeles. Instead of merely being given bags of free clothes to wear when waiting for the paparazzi, the store embarrassed them by making them all play French Connection-themed Twister, whatever that is. [WWD]
• Dania Ramirez, a.k.a. Maya on Heroes, is a newly minted Covergirl. [People]
• Footwear brand Penny Loves Kenny has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company founder, Kenny Robinson, explained the filing as a tactical move in a 6-year legal battle with two China-based agents, and said he expects the brand to emerge intact in 3-6 months. [WWD]
• Philip Lim stepped into his SoHo boutique last weekend and helped some customers find the right sizes and pick out flattering items — all without telling them who he was. Then some fashion-savvy shoppers blew his cover. If more designers did thoughtful things like that, they'd certainly sell more clothes. [Fashionista]
• Burberry's second store in Canada, and its first in Toronto, opens this Friday. [WWD]
• Benetton's profits fell 63% in the first half of this year. [WWD]
• Barneys New York is putting a brave face on its 13 months — and counting — without a C.E.O., its double-digit sales declines, and its recent credit rating downgrade, to Caa3, for "very high investment risk." The company recently received $25 million from parent company Istithmar World Capital to shore up liquidity, and this week it hired an asset management company to help it restructure its $500 million debt. [WWD]

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


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


Reader response to Wintour and her aesthetic was mixed.


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


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


It was shot by Lothar Schmidt on location at Danceteria.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady GaGa, is that you?

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

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

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

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

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

All images via the Google Books archive of New York

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

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

We decided to resurrect some early gems, like this Versace campaign, shot by Richard Avedon, and co-starring (who else?) Naomi and Linda.


There is an entire cultural studies thesis about power dressing and the representation of women as authority figures and "having it all" latent in this picture from 1987.


Isn't it strange that this one, though it dates from almost ten years later, seems so passive by comparison? Calvin Klein had Turlington on a very restrictive exclusive contract until the early 1990s, when she was dumped by the brand for cutting her hair without consulting them — a relationship, and a reaction, that has always struck me as emblematic of a deep paternalism.


Herb Ritts, for Versace, makes Turlington look here like a piece of Surrealist art.


You just know there's a hipster in Williamsburg itching to wear this, a coat so ugly even Irving Penn couldn't make it look appetizing, right now.


Pressing questions: what is going on with the crotch of those pants?


Oh, man, remember film grain?


Since it seems inevitable that we're heading back to the 90s, would it be totally unrealistic to hope that we might return to these 90s?


Because I, for one, do not relish the thought of going back to these ones.


Ah, that's better.


Irving Penn contributes so very rarely to Vogue these days — which is understandable, given his advanced years. But this picture, and the next one, help show why he is missed.


Seriously, how long has it been since we've seen the actual shape of a human body, unaltered by Photoshop, in the pages of American Vogue? All the twists and overlaps are what make this picture — like the bulge in her arm that proves its supporting her weight, and the indentation the protrusion of her heel makes in her ass. And you can easily imagine these being among the first features that would be smoothed and tightened away under today's aesthetic regime.


Like they are here, in this otherwise striking cover from 2002.


Someone should make pumps like these again. They're not stupidly high, they have that perfect not-too-pointy toe, and the classic tapering heel. No hidden platform, no witchy long vamp, no 4" stiletto to negotiate walking in — just cute proportions and cute prints. Linda is saying, "Fuck yeah!"


Meisel in the 80s doing Avedon in the 50s isn't the most original of themes, but I'm a sucker for shots of women putting on their makeup and jewelry. Something about those moments of feminine toilette is so intimate and fascinating.


Shoulder-grazing ear-rings and 3 lb necklaces are fun to wear! Whee!


Never one to shy away from the unusual, for a 2006 campaign for her Puma line Nuala, the supermodel had artist Alex Katz paint her.

Christy Turlington is, of course, a lot more than a model these days. She quit the industry at the age of 25 to study comparative religion at NYU, and is currently a graduate student in public health at Columbia. Now 40 and a mother of two, Turlington is making a documentary about maternal health in developing countries. She's financing it with the money she makes from her occasional gigs, like being the next face of YSL. "I can talk about things that people in the field are afraid to bring up," says Turlington, "because their funding is tied to administrations and policy."

25 Years of Christy Turlington in Vogue [Style.com]
Beauty And Soul [Style.com]

• How cool are these Charlie Brown New Balance sneakers? Cool enough that we wish they weren't just for kids. [WWD]
• A London artist has created Kate Moss and Agyness Deyn paper dolls which look frighteningly like the real thing. [Pipeline.Refinery29]

• Your daily dose of the horrible: American Apparel shiny leggings for children. [Fashionista]
• Police in France have arrested 25 suspects in relation to last December's $118 million jewel heist at Harry Winston. Members of the alleged ring had been under police surveillance for months, and when arrangements had been made between the gang and some prospective buyers, the authorities swooped in. In addition to the 25 arrests, police found weapons and $345,000 in cash. [AP]
• Nicole Richie swears that her next collection for her House of Harlow 1960 jewelry line will be completely different than the first. In fact, it'll be "focusing more on old English, equestrian and more sophisticated looks" than the flea-market-inspired first trip out the gate. Richie's shoe and accessory lines, meanwhile, will be ready for Spring 2010. [People]
• Dolce & Gabbana, newly internet-savvy, uploaded Fall 2009 Dolce & Gabbana and D&G campaigns to its just-launched website. Steven Klein shot Mariacarla Boscono, Edita Vilkeviciute, and Heidi Mount at a casino for Dolce & Gabbana, and Mario Testino shot Katie Fogarty, Sara Blomqvist, Stephanie Rad, Hanna Rundlof, and Ragnhild Jevne for D&G. Heidi Mount also wears a giant pink Margiela-inspired fur and poses like an ape in one. [Fashionologie]
• The New Yorker sure knows how to give a bad restaurant review. Taking in the "sterile" and "unexuberant" fare at Armani's restaurant-within-a-store on Fifth Avenue, Lauren Collins writes: "At the bar, a manager and a bartender argued, loudly. The dispute seemed to be about a pen. Their passion did not extend to a pair of women who were waiting for a table, or, once the women were seated, to their full glasses of wine, paid for and awaiting transferral." [NYr]
• A historic Christian Science church on Park Avenue took a look at its dwindling congregation and finances, and its stellar real estate, and do the obvious thing: allow a catering company to use its building to host events, in return for necessary repairs, money, and continued access for regularly scheduled services. Even though the kind of events we're talking about here — shindigs with Sir Paul McCartney, Oscar de la Renta runway shows — are hardly Bushwick artist loft keggers, the Park Avenue set has gone all guerrilla in its opposition to the church's activities. One neighbour even parked her car in the middle of the avenue to block the access of de la Renta's show's guests. Is it too much to hope she was towed? [NYTimes]
• A maker of hypoallergenic beauty products has decided to associate its line with the 11th birthday of Malia Obama. Tacky. [US News]
• Natural cosmetics purveyor Dr. Hauschka is apparently swamped by demand — but, because of quality control concerns and its business philosophy based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (no, really), it's unwilling to expand too quickly. [Reuters]
• The website for MDLR, Moises de la Renta's fashion line, is now live. [MDLR]
• French documentarian Loïc Prigent, who made the excellent Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton and Signé Chanel, about the putting together of a Chanel couture collection, has a new series showing on Sundance starting September 10. Prigent's camera follows Sonia Rykiel, Proenza Schouler, Karl Lagerfeld, and Jean-Paul Gaultier in the last 36 hours before their respective runway shows. (It's a good thing Prigent is sensitive to the dramatic tension of a smoke break, because there'll be a lot of them.) Rykiel's show is her 40th anniversary extravaganza in Paris last October, Prigent finds Proenza Schouler and Fendi, designed by Lagerfeld, at the Fall/Winter 2009 collections of this Spring, and he'll catch up with Gaultier at couture week in Paris next month. I'm marking my freaking calendar. [Glamour]
• Looks like there's been a breakdown at Alessandro Dell'Acqua. The designer, whose namesake label has been owned since 2003 by Cherry Grove, an Italian corporation that produces high-end clothing, released an open letter informing the fashion world that he, Alessandro Dell'Acqua, would like to publicly distance himself from the Alessandra Dell'Acqua men's Spring/Summer or women's Pre-Spring collections, the former of which is about to walk in Milan, because he hasn't been given the opportunity to do anything beyond submit sketches to Cherry Grove. Alessandro Dell'Acqua lost his job with the Italian house Malo after holding it for less than a year following Itierre's bankruptcy; this angry letter reads like a gold-plated invitation to be fired from his own label, too. [FWD]
• Once every media outlet had dutifully covered the "outrage" over the Steven Meisel-shot Calvin Klein "foursome" billboard in SoHo, the brand replaced it with a tamer shot of a girl in a red bikini. Racked has a picture. [GoG]
• Well, lookie here: a male model who admits to having to maintain a diet to be catwalk skinny. [NYTimes]
• Everyone knows Abercrombie & Fitch has been struggling in the recession, and losing market share to lower-priced competitors like Aéropostale and The Buckle. Besides quietly breaking its rule against discounting its own stock and closing its Ruehl chain, the company hadn't exactly said what it was planning to do to reverse the tide that saw its May same-store sales slide a whopping 28% — until now. The proffered solution? Two hundred and ten store leases, which comprise some 20% of the chain's total, are up for renewal over the next two years. Abercrombie thinks it might save money by not renewing all of them. Revolutionary. [TS]
• A three-story Adidas factory in India was engulfed by flames on Tuesday night. There were no casualties. [HindustanTimes]
• Talbots may have had to cut 370 jobs, eliminate its 401(k) matching contributions, and suspend its quarterly stock dividend, but that won't stop it paying CEO Trudy Sullivan $1.2 million this year. Richard O'Connell, the struggling company's real estate and legal executive, will also get a 23% raise, to $500,000. [TS]
• Gen Art, an organization which supports emerging fashion talent in the U.S. and has helped launch the careers of such names as Vena Cava and Zac Posen, is in a bad spot financially. Already reeling from layoffs, the founders hope to raise $250,000 in ticket sales and donations for their 15th anniversary party tomorrow night. Gen Art needs another $500,000 after that to continue its operations. [WWD]

• Gwyneth Paltrow has tired of the cosmetics contract gravy train; no longer shall the actress concentrate on embodying the qualities of the Estée Lauder brand. Instead, she'll be the new, white Oprah! [Daily Mail]

• Nanette Lepore has added her voice to the save the garment center chorus. [HuffPo]
• According to Jesus Luz's Brazilian agent, Sergio Mattos, Luz was paid $100 for the two-day Steven Klein shoot with Madonna that ended up in W. Let me say this one more time: that kind of pay is entirely standard for an editorial shoot, no matter one's modeling experience or industry status. [NY Post]
• Christina Aguilera looks, um, Photoshopped to high hell in the new Stephen Webster jewelry campaign. [Sun]
• Jerry Hall got a $750,000 advance from HarperCollins to write a memoir that would include full details on her life with Mick Jagger. But the manuscript Hall rendered proved too tame and cagey on the subject of Jagger for the publisher's taste; the supermodel has agreed to return the advance. (Side note: how many times do you get to read a word like "priapic" in the Daily Mail?) [Daily Mail]
• Terry Richardson just shot next year's Pirelli calendar in Trancoso, Bahia, Brazil. Georgina Stojiljkovic, Catherine McNeil, Abbey Lee Kershaw, and Daisy Lowe are purported to be featured, along with actual Brazilians Gracie Carvalho and Ana Beatriz Barros. Glamurama got a NSFW snap of Richardson in action, shooting a topless McNeil on a white horse. [Glamurama via Fashionologie]
• Supposedly, Zac Posen is in the early stages of producing a scripted series for the CW network about the equestrian world. Might be a wise move to diversify, as we keep hearing wild rumors that his label is in trouble. [The Cut]
• Erin Fetherston is also shooting a short film this week, starring Juliette Lewis, and her fall collection. Music is by Damon Dash. Her husband also confirmed that the designer will launch a line for home-shopping giant QVC this fall, probably during fashion week. [WWD]
• Stacey Bendet Eisner — yes, last year she married the son of that Eisner — is the designer behind Alice + Olivia. And she says there are exciting things to come for the brand, including an expanded line of embellished t-shirts, a jewelry line with Erickson Beamon coming out this November, and a possible cosmetics deal. [Blackbook]
• Macy's says not to expect deep markdowns this season — but it does want a lower-priced outlet store bearing its name, since Saks and Nordstrom both have them. [WWD]
• Douglas Reker, one of the bracingly new designers I'm personally most excited about, has just been picked up for fall by Barneys Coop. [Crain's]
• Now that Lakshmi Menon — two-time Indian Vogue covergirl — has had her only-girl editorial debut in American Vogue, industry commentators wonder aloud: Why has it taken so long for a South Asian supermodel to emerge? Sarah Doukas of London mega-agency Storm says it's because Indians are culturally conservative and don't want their daughters modeling; Menon says agencies don't have scouting networks on the subcontinent, and if you don't look for something, of course you won't find it. [Independent]
• England's National Trust is in talks to buy the home of the late designer Laura Ashley. [Telegraph]
• Leigh Lezark, who is a member of this preposterous thing called the MisShapes, but who nonetheless finds time in her busy schedule to "model", might be Matthew Williamson's new muse. Because a perpetually black-clad stony-stared New Yorker would be the perfect match for his exuberant tastes. [Fashionista]
• Rosa Chá, which is just about the best-looking and best-fitting swimwear out there, barring perhaps Norma Kamali, and therefore heartbreaking for its extravagant price, is losing its founding designer, Amir Slama. Slama, who launched Rosa Chá over two decades ago, is going to start a namesake swim collection. Brazilian Alexandre Herchcovitz will take over at Rosa Chá. [WWD]
• Diego Della Valle, the head of Italian leather goods brand Tod's, has doubled his investment stake in Saks Fifth Avenue, to 5.9%. [WWD]
• Alberta Ferretti, Moschino, and Pollini are all lowering their prices. Their parent company, Italy's Aeffe SpA, experienced steep losses in the first quarter of this year, and has thus formulated a cost-cutting plan that is intended to save $13.6 million over the course of 2010. In addition to lowering prices, Aeffe is shrinking its collections and planning layoffs. [WWD]

• This report calls Jennifer Aniston "lovelorn" and "notoriously unlucky-in-love" but explains that she has "set her sights" on Gerard Butler, which is "cause for renewed optimism." What does all this really mean? It's simple:

They're going to be in another movie together. [Daily Mail]

• Lindsay Lohan was seen hanging out with Mel B after the Spice Girl's Peepshow revue in Vegas. Also, she maybe exchanged numbers with a GUY. [Daily Mail]
• Jackie Chan told a "business forum" that Chinese people may not need a free society. "I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said Saturday. "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want." Pro-democracy peeps are pissed, obvs; one guy says: "He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets." [MSNBC]
• Kate Hudson turned 30 with a "star-studded" bash on Friday night, but Owen Wilson wasn't there. Who was? Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake, Matthew McConaughey, Tobey Maguire, Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gwen Stefani, Eva Mendes, Zach Braff and, of course, Cher. [People]
• The woman who broke into Britney Spears' property says she is not a stalker and the "documentary" she was filming while peeping inside Britney's windows with a camera was "paparazzi work preparation" because she would like to do some "paparazzi gigs." [E!]
• Madonna, who fell from her horse in the Hamptons on Saturday, is blaming the paparazzi for jumping out of the bushes and scaring the horse. Of course, she was thrown from a horse in 2005, so who knows. [Mirror]
• The only paparazzo who took pictures of Madonna riding her horse says her Madgesty is a liar. He says he took pix of Madge riding, then left. Then 30 minutes later he got a tip about an ambulance being sent; so he went back and took pix of her being tended to. He says: "If I had startled the horse, I would have gotten pictures!" [TMZ]
• By the by, Madonna wasn't just "riding" that horse but leaping hurdles. She was at the home of famed photographer Steven Klein and Jesus Luz was there, too. [NY Post]
• Madonna's adoption appeal has been scheduled for May 4, so expect to see her in Malawi then. [People]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Ellen Pompeo is pregnant! [People]
• Mel Gibson asked for a new judge in his divorce case, because he felt that Judge Rafael Ongkeko was "prejudiced against" him, and bingo! He got a new judge. [E!]
• Is Mel Gibson's "mystery girlfriend" Oksana Grigorieva? None of the other Oksanas were the right ones. [People]
• Mel Gibson was seen going to church at his private church in Malbu on Sunday. Then he went for ice cream. This is "news." [People]
• Russell Brand called President Obama's answering machine while on Radio 2, trying to figure out which UK football team Barack supports. [The Sun]
• Victoria Beckham, who has said she "hates working out," has decided to take up Pilates. [Daily Mail]
• May the good Lord bless Kelly Osbourne, who says of her wedding: "Vegas is way too tacky. I'd prefer to get married in London, as I have family and friends here." [Daily Mail]
• Kelly Bensimon is being sued for stealing an idea for a jewelry line from a former Elle Accessories colleague. Hence the headline "Housewife Kelly Bensimon Stole My Owl." [Page Six]
• Kelly Bensimon also says she does not hate Bethenny Frankel: "I don't hate anybody. Why would I? I respect Bethenny as a dynamic go-getter. Its tough being single in New York and working." Plus, Kelly says she'd like to to Dancing With The Stars. [WWD]
• Singing sensation Susan Boyle was obsessed with Donny Osmond as a teen. Also, her brother says: "She doesn't wear make-up or fancy clothes. It's not that she doesn't care, she just doesn't see why other people should care how she looks." [Mirror]
• Did some dude smooch never-been-kissed Susan Boyle? [Mirror]
• Rosie O'Donnell says: "Simon Cowell was genuinely moved when he heard Susan Boyle sing. He showed his humanity, and I actually liked him. It was a moment in time." [People]
• Q: Is Hugh Jackman the only mutant with a nude scene [in Wolverine]? Ryan Reynolds: "It's a prerequisite-you have to show off your mutant berries is what they told us. No. I think Hugh is probably the only nudie. I don't remember taking my pants off. I do have a faulty memory, though." [Newsweek]
• Another day, another story of Prince Harry attending an "illegal rave." [Daily Mail]
• This report claims that Amy Winehouse has been so stimulated and chilled out living in St. Lucia, she plans to write a children's book. [Bilde.de]
• Why does Amy Winehouse have burns on her legs? [The Sun]
• Jamie Foxx says while plating a schizophrenic homeless man in The Soloist, "I was in a bad place because I felt like I might be literally losing my mind." He had panic attacks and bouts of paranoia during filming. [LA Times]
• In an interview with Idris Elba, the Brit actor of The Office, The Wire and new flick Obsessed says of people thinking he is hot: "It's weird because, you know, I've been just the ordinary chap for 30 odd years and suddenly, I'm going into this [situation]: 'Oh my God, all the ladies love you!' And I'm like, 'Huh? Me? It doesn't make any sense!' I didn't grow up like some sort of sex symbol. It does make a gentleman walk with a stride in his step, believe me." [WaPo]
• Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian, the sisters who, according to this story, "aren't famous for having a big ass and a sex tape," are getting their own spin-off TV show on E! [Media Week]
• Jeff Goldblum is joining the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and something tells you he's going to be awesome. [NY Times]
• Peaches Geldof, 20, who edits a magazine and has been a TV personality, plans to record an album. At least she's industrious? [Daily Mail]
• Some great quotes from Whoopi Goldberg in this interview. She says "I don't look like Halle Berry. But chances are, she's going to end up looking like me." And: "An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything." And: "It's great to see Barack as president, but there's a lot to get done and he really is in the stuff. There's no money and everybody's out of their minds and pissed at America." As for why she is not in the stage version of Sister Act in London? "I am 112, so I was too old. I also don't sing." [Guardian]
• Na, na, na nanana… Paul McCartney played a "Hey Jude" singalong after midnight at Coachella. [Mirror]
• "A Night Out With" Colin Hanks involves playing games like Who Am I? and Connect Four. [NY Times]
• Did you know that Viggo Mortensen speaks fluent Spanish and Danish? Lots of details about him in this interview. [Guardian]
• Here, the Daily Mail apologizes for saying that Will Smith's school was a Scientology school. "We are assured that the academy founded by the actor Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, is secular, with no religious affiliation and welcomes children from all backgrounds." Someone must have threatened to sue! [Daily Mail]
• RuPaul hosts the NewNowNext Awards. which will premiere June 13 on LOGO and LOGOonline — with a performance by Lady GaGa. [LOGO]
• Edie Falco is addicted to the Discovery Health Channel and hospital-based doctor shows. Now she's playing an ER nurse hooked on Vicodin and Adderall in a Showtime dark comedy series called Nurse Jackie, which premieres in June. [NY Daily News]
• Fran Drescher is working on getting a TV talk show, where she can talk about politics, culture, and health issues. Hopefully nothing where we'd have to hear her laugh. [Daily Mail]
• Marianne Faithfull and her "soulmate" have split after 15 years; he went on to slap a British Airways staffer over the weekend. [Daily Mail, The Sun]
• Actress/singer Patsy Kensit married DJ Jeremy Healy over the weekend; her fourth marriage. She's also been hitched to Dan Donovan of Big Audio Dynamite, Jim Kerr of Simple Minds and Liam Gallagher of Oasis. [Daily Mail]
• These "Paul Newman cheated" stories will only make you sad, especially when you find out one woman told him: "You're always drunk and you can't even make love." [The Sun]
• Zac Efron's flick, 17 Again, was number one at the box office, with a respectable $24 million. Fess up: Who saw it? [MSNBC]
• What the world needs now: A Joan Collins makeover show. Too bad it's only in the UK! [The Sun]
• Blind item! "Which young starlet demanded 17 free handbags after forgetting she needed to buy gifts?" [Gatecrasher]
• "Women always want to be what they're not. If you're the pretty girl, you want to be the quirky girl. If you're the smart girl, you want to be the pretty girl." — Jordana Brewster, who wants to be a Bond girl. [Page Six]
• "I'm not going to tell you it's been all smooches and hugs. But it shouldn't be because that would be a bore. If my band didn't have issues, if they didn't throw tantrums, I would think I was with a bunch of suckers. As long as they can handle it, I can handle it. After all we're just delivering music that people love, so how bad can it be? It could be worse. We could be drafted." — Perry Farrell, on the "bitter feuding" happening now that Jane's Addiction has reunited. [Reuters]
• "Probably 10 years from now I'll be able to look at this phase of my life and be able to understand [my character in Cheri's] journey more. But I think for a lot of women 50 is a very particular age. I'm not one that's ever really thought about birthdays, but this was a big one and I was not looking forward to it. But surprisingly it has left me feeling liberated in a strange kind of way. Sort of, the pressure's off. And it's actually quite wonderful. I wasn't expecting that." — Michelle Pfeiffer. [Telegraph]
• "When I was in the theater in Liverpool, we had a café where we'd have lunch. In the evenings it was full of girls, and we were like, 'What the hell is this?' It was the Beatles. Later on, I met up with John [Lennon] at Cannes and we had an evening, getting bombed out of our minds on alcohol. The sixties wasn't drugs, you see. What ended the sixties was drugs." — Michael Caine. [New York Mag]
• "A guy I worked with recently told me, 'You have to earn the right to hold a gun.' And that completely made sense. Can you imagine me running around with a gun in a film? I noticed the second I started that the things you want to be involved with are always just out of reach. Most parts you'd want, people won't really consider you for, because you have to earn that respect. The things people do want you for are usually not things you want to do. At one point, somebody said to me, 'What do you wanna do? A cool crime drama? Do you wanna shoot up heroin? We'll do anything you wanna do…the Musical.'" — Zac Efron. [GQ]
• "Most of those guys on TMZ are idiots. Actually, I wouldn't call them idiots, because that's doing a disservice to idiots all over the world. They're whatever's worse than that. I feel more sorry for them than anything. I don't know if it's being mean, than being utterly moronic. There's a quality of somebody that must have been deeply hurt, to become so immature and to have such an unloved soul that they would choose a profession like that. It's incredible." — Ryan Reynolds. [Newsweek]
• "I feel angry that I even have to say I am atheist. The alternative is so ludicrous to me. I don't want to dignify the idea of religion by saying that. The burden of proof should be on their side, not mine." — Ricky Gervais. [Telegraph]
• "He was supposed to be writing this for me. He could have written me anything and he comes up with this. If that's what he thinks of me, well, then I'm not for him and he's not for me." — Marilyn Monroe on the screenplay Arthur Miller wrote for her. [Daily Express]
• "My sister is the Twitter queen. She told me about the twittering, but I don't get it, I feel like I'm getting really old. I'm like, what? I don't understand. Just call me." — Beyoncé. [Yahoo News via AP]

• Dita Von Teese wears two Elie Saab couture creations in her limited-run Paris show. Is it strange that the only people who can afford couture these days are burlesque artists and Saudi princesses? [IHT]

• Fashion week is "hitting the reset button" because in this economic climate, return on investment is ever more important. [WWD]
• And don't expect any parties. Really. [WWD]
• The show schedule is now available online. [The Cut]
• Christian Siriano will be there, in the Salon at the tents, showing his new collection for Payless. Which is good news because at $25-$45 for bags and shoes inspired by Egyptology, these are that rare affordable fashion week thing. [WWD]
• Interesting: Richie Rich, everyone's favorite glittering ex-club kid, is showing on February 18. At no less a venue than the Waldorf Astoria, demonstrating once and for all that his particular brand of sparkle can exist above 23rd St. There hasn't been much heard of Rich since the end of his old label, Heatherette, which he ran with Traver Rains. [The Cut]
• Rich is promising "Head-to-toe wearable" for his namesake collection. Wonder how this'll shake out. [WWD]
• Isaac Mizrahi already showed his fall/winter collection for Liz Claiborne. It looks good, and involves something called "Kaleidoplaid." [Style.com]
• And the re-re-animated Halston is forgoing a show in favor of a video it's going to e-mail to editors and buyers on Saturday. [WWD]
• PETA's also gearing up for its favorite parasitic marketing opportunity of the year. Giorgio Armani, who stopped using all fur except for, it claims, rabbit pelts left over from the meat industry, recently drew the pressure group's ire and his New York flagship store will be picketed. [NYDN]
• Jason Wu, the American Vogue cover getting, Michelle Obama outfitting, 26-year-old fashion superstar, is to be sold on Net-A-Porter.com. [UK Elle]
• New York Magazine has 10 models to watch this season, you know, just some real new faces like that girl who walked for Marc Jacobs that one time and that girl in the current Prada campaign. [The Cut]
• Finally, a fashion magazine for the girls who smoke cigarettes behind the parking lot at school and could tell a Steven Meisel from a Steven Klein at 50 paces before entering their teens. Carine Roitfeld, editor-in-chief of French Vogue, is rumored to be assembling a team to launch a biannual teen fashion magazine. French Teen Vogue! Ooh la la. [FWD]
• Chanel Iman is supposedly to have a walk-on part on Gossip Girl as a guest at one of Serena's parties. A tipster reports she ate macaroni and cheese for lunch. (Chanel's still at that age where you can eat anything and not gain an ounce. Sigh.) [Daily Intel]
• Emma Roberts, Julia's niece, is another new face of Neutrogena. [WWD]
• Lorenzo Martone, Marc Jacobs' boyfriend of 11 months, seems like a charming romantic. "Valentine's Day is two days before his show, it has to be very quiet, but I'm still planning a little surprise," says the Brazilian. "During the last Vuitton show in Paris, I didn't tell him I was going to go — I just showed up in Paris in his office with flowers as a surprise the day before the show. He was totally, totally surprised. It was really, really good to see his reaction, and I don't know — we are so in love that it was really gorgeous to see his eyes." My heart, it's melting now. [The Cut]
• Two acts who grew up in Illinois, Liz Phair and OK Go!, are among the musicians featured in Banana Republic's New York-themed spring campaign, which will be out on February 18. [Brand Week]
• The "Got Milk?" campaign is the latest concern to drop alleged domestic abuser Chris Brown from its roster. Cover Girl says it's standing by Rihanna. [E! Online]
• Jones Apparel Group posted a slightly smaller-than-expected quarterly loss of 4 cents a share. (Analysts had expected 5 cents.) Revenues for the company even rose, by 1%, to $846.9 million. Let us all cheer not-bad fashion business news! [NY Times]
• Nike is cutting 4% of its 35,000-strong workforce. [WWD]
• Bob Marley's family has licensed his image and name, along with catchphrases like "Catch a fire" and "One Love" to the company Hilco Consumer Capital, which paid some $20 million in the deal. Hilco already owns Ellen Tracy and Linens 'n' Things. [Reuters]
• Hadley Freeman scored the first interview with Phoebe Philo, newly of Celine. Marco Gobetti, the LVMH vice-president with whom Philo is rumored to already be clashing, makes an uncomfortable joke about having to "cover up the bruises" — his, or Philo's, it's not clear — before the journalist arrived. [Guardian]
• The New York Times' critical shopper visited the new Brooks Brothers Black Fleece store in the West Village, and found the Thom Browne-designed line very interesting if not ultimately practical. (There are fit issues with the womenswear.) Still, the theory is good: "Picture a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Nurse Ratched, only more obsessive-compulsive. It is a look so stiffly starched - all the buttons are just so very, very buttoned, both up and down - as to recall corsetry, humane restraint devices or orthopedic inserts. It is a look that may mold and instruct the wearer in his relentless quest for superior health, posture and hygiene. As the 'Goldberg Variations' were to Glenn Gould, these clothes seem to be both the tools and execution of a meticulously tended neurosis." [NY Times]
• This sounds awesome: Prada has asked four stylists, including Carine Roitfeld and Katie Grand, to style their stores in New York, London, Paris and Milan. Anyone not in those cities can see the project online. [WWD]
• Whoa. Raquel Welch is shilling reading glasses. I suppose One Million Years B.C. was a long time ago. [Brand Freak]
• There's an entertaining and thoughtful Q&A with someone named Chicken John Rinaldi, who apparently led the fight against the proposed American Apparel on Valencia St. in San Francisco. Rinaldi comes off rather well: "It depends on whose liberty you are defending. Are you defending the liberty of American Apparel to open a store wherever they want? Or are you defending the liberty of the people who live on the block? Or are you defending the people who shop at the store? Or are you going to defend the liberty of the people who own the other stores whose rents are without question going to quadruple?" [Mother Jones]
• And now, our daily minute of hate: Italian brand Relish's new campaign, shot in Rio de Janeiro but featured now on billboards in Italy, features men dressed as Rio cops molesting women as they arrest them. [Shakesville]

First, the much-anticipated Nan Goldin shoot. Goldin almost never shoots fashion these days — I think I saw an editorial for a German children's magazine included in the International Center of Photography's current "Weird Beauty" fashion photography exhibit, which probably comprises, along with this story, her total fashion output of the last five years — so seeing her work with such a versatile model is special.

The shoot is raw and the colors are saturated. The whole thing looks moody, like stills from some slightly bygone film.

Excuse the prominent gutters in these scans; I was selfishly trying to keep the issue intact, because it's so beautiful.

I want this Alexander Wang sweater. And the attitude to wear it. Unfortunately my prospects of developing the wherewithal to fund or develop either are slim.

Now, the Steven Klein editorial, entitled "Lara Fiction Noire," is intense. It's set in some kind of dingy concrete warehouse, and opens with a shot of Lara Stone in Dolce & Gabbana underwear, handcuffed by her ankles to a bedframe. (It might refer to an earlier shot of Jane Birkin in the same pose, apparently by Steven Meisel, provenance unknown.) The male model co-stars (Lara's victims? kidnappers? playmates?) are Travis Hanson and Doug Porter.

It gets ever more disturbing as the disguises come into play.

And then the weapons.

Not to mention the disturbing sense of observing a ménage-à-trois taking place amidst an air of violence.

The ambiguity of the locus of control here, my own uncertainty as to which person has the power, gives me a strong feeling of unease.

The above five images were all included in the magazine itself — but they do not comprise the entire story. Another three pictures were apparently spiked by French Vogue. Klein put them up on his website, with the helpful legend "UNCENSORED" in big, red type.

And the out-takes are doozies. I am almost too disturbed by this violent flesh-eaten zombie model car-crash event that Lara, in the driver's seat, is taking totally in stride, to frame my thoughts into words. But I also feel like this is the most affecting and thought-provoking editorial in the entire issue.

This is in the register of a David Lynch film, full of frightful imagery and the barest hints of a plot more horrifying than any slasher flick. What does it mean? Who has the power? Why is that man's face covered in blood?

For some reason, I find this one scarier than the one with the male model who might as well be a burn victim or someone Lara recently flayed and ate. Lara just looks so serene, so at peace with the hell around her, it's chilling. (Also, what happened to her stocking?) This is like a nightmare, come to life inside a magazine, and it's some of the most moving work I've seen from Klein in years. I'm transfixed and appalled and exhilerated and exquisitely, perfectly disturbed, all at once. Like any art form, I suppose it's not the role of fashion to make anyone comfortable. Luckily it's almost the end of the day; I need a drink after all that.

I might nurse it as I rewatch this behind-the-scenes video, which Klein also just uploaded to his site. Seeing the bloodied male model stirring slightly as Klein shoots is somehow all the more disturbing.












Earlier: French Vogue: All Lara Stone, All The Time

Related: Steven Klein [Official Site]

The photographs, by Steven Klein, tell the "story" of a powerful, sexy woman and her boyish plaything. The entire portfolio, "Blame It On Rio," is 46 pages; we've pulled out some choice shots…

Her Madgesty actually had a selection of men to choose from.

Decisions, decisions.

How will she know who she really wants if they don't take their clothes off?

"Hi, I'm sorry… It's about your swimtrunks… They're small, but they're not small enough."

I think you'd better… come inside.

Best. Vacation. Ever.

Question about getting your name tattooed on your back: Is it solely for the purpose of identifying yourself in W when you are not facing the camera? Just asking.

Madonna wants to show Jesus her "etchings."

And maybe some other stuff. Better lock the door!

Guy Ritchie who?

We'd better leave these two alone; we already know what comes next.

Madonna: Blame it on Rio [W]

• Olivier Theyskens is holding true to the fundamentals. “When the economy changes, it’s not like you want to start eating bad-tasting chocolate,” he said, after showing his pre-fall collection for Nina Ricci. [WWD]

• Serial rapist Anand Jon, the former celebrity designer, is scheduled to be sentenced today. The penalty for his 16 counts of sexual abuse against models, including 7 counts of forcible rape of women aged 14-21 is a mandatory life sentence, with earliest parole eligibility in 2075. Regardless, his mother was apparently overheard approaching wealthy guests at a hotel in Chennai, India, asking for money for an appeal. Jon's website greeting page opens with a quote from Gandhi: "Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." [NY Post]
• Nixonite dirty trickster Roger Stone — subject of an excellent Jeffrey Toobin profile last year — apparently thinks himself a fashion maven. Taking up the mantle of the deceased Mr. Blackwell, Stone inaugurated a new annual feature on his website, a worst- and best-dressed list. Though occasionally wacky ("Lobbyists are the only elegant men left in America"), his advice isn't all off the mark: Obama and Carla Bruni tops the men's and women's lists, respectively, and he says Tom Wolfe "looks like he's a cross-dressing character in a lesser Dickens novel." [The Stone Zone]
• Designer Vivienne Tam held a fashion show in Beijing to raise money to save the panda habitat destroyed in last year's Sichuan earthquake. The five one-off outfits she auctioned featured panda motifs. Adorable. [Reuters]
• As part of his prize for winning the 2008 CDFA/Vogue Fashion Fund award, Alexander Wang gets one year of professional mentoring from none other than Diane von Furstenberg. Runners-up Vena Cava and Albertus Swanepoel are to be mentored by Patrick Robinson and Andrew Rosen, and Andy and Kate Spade, respectively. [WWD]
• Ellen Tracy has inked a licensing deal for intimate apparel. Expect to see "sleepwear, at-homewear, robes, foundations, shapewear and lingerie" everywhere Ellen Tracy is sold as soon as this fall. [WWD]
• WWD has a good round-up of the status of designers' venue preparations for New York Fashion Week, just one month away. IMG is not introducing a fourth, off-site presentation venue this season, as had been floated, meaning rental at the Bryant Park Tents proper will cost $28,000-$48,000. Many designers are opting for cheaper locales. Calvin Klein is moving its show to the ground floor of the company headquarters, Vera Wang is holding hers in her new SoHo store, smaller labels are banding together for shared shows, and others, like Thakoon and Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti, are showing in Chelsea gallery spaces. Meanwhile, Tommy Hilfiger is back to the tents after a multi-season absence. Marc Jacobs, as usual, intends to use the Lexington Avenue Armory. [WWD]
• Sass & Bide are down for the count entirely. Although they intended to return to fashion week this season, co-founder Sarah Jane Clark's third pregnancy means the Australian duo will stay home. What a happy event to spur such a sad occurrence. [Fashionista]
• High dudgeon at a retail bigwig confab: J. Crew's chief executive Mickey Drexler reportedly took Neiman Marcus' chief executive Burt Tansky to task over luxury markups. Drexler told Tansky the days of the $800 high heel are over. “Wall Street is over,” he continued, and “more wealth has been created on non-productive [financial] transactions” than ever before. When the market comes back, Drexler said, consumers will not be tricked into paying department store margins again. “There’s a whole reset button that has been pushed," he said. Tansky responded by saying “It’s premature to start denigrating what the affluent customer will want.” This fight sounds like it was awesome and very, very awkward. [WSJ]
• The man behind the "Save Anna" t-shirt has a new thing for you to wear: A Rachel Zoe "bananas" shirt with a Warhol-esque screenprint of the stylist-approved fruit and the phrase "I die. Bananas." underneath. Eating disorder, tanning club card, and giant hippie dress optional. [The Cut]
• NY Mag has a sweet video of Marc Jacobs in bed talking about the Stephen Sprouse graffiti collection, which was recently relaunched. "I have a lot of Stephen's clothes and the thing is every time I look at them, they never feel old-fashioned to me, they never look out-of-date. I don't originate or create anything, I'm just here putting things together or re-putting things together, and I like it that way," says Jacobs. [The Cut]
• Wait, what? Stephen Alan for Uniqlo? Please let this not be like that time Amy Winehouse said she was doing a clothing line. [The Cut]
• Dolce & Gabbana's new campaign, shot by Steven Klein, is being proudly trumpeted as a potential source of controversy. Inspired by the Visconti film The Leopard, about a Sicilian aristocratic family at the time of Italian unification, the ads will feature images of male models praying. "For sure they will say we are offending religion," sighed either Domenico or Stefano, reports Reuters. "Instead it could be read as a return to values. And there is a need for that at this time." Yes. For "values," and, presumably, for valuable clothes. [Reuters]
• Remember how Domenico Vacca and John Varvatos both claimed to have dressed Jeremy Piven for the Golden Globes? Turns out it was a tie. The actor's publicist says he wore a Domenico Vacca jacket and John Varvatos pants. Which might be true, or it might be her trying to stay on both companies' good sides after pledging separately to each to wear its clothes and screwing that up royally. How much you want to bet pissed reps for both labels are poring over photos trying to tell their lapel notches from the competitor's as we speak? [WSJ]
• Nonetheless, expect more of the same as award season wears on through the grim retail market. The thin consumer dollar means designers are even more eager to get their gears on a red carpet. Katie Holmes' Golden Globes stylist even received personal phone calls from several solicitous designers. "That never happened before," said the stylist, "usually I just hear from their publicists." And cows walk upright and eat manburgers in this strange opposite world! [WSJ]