Writes Judith Warner, after remembering a painful few years of early-teen cruelty,

In fiction. It's what I hope my next book project will be, you see: a tween time-travel novel set in 1977, when there really was a roller rink on Waverly Place, and I was in 7th grade...The book is ostensibly all about a daughter's learning that she can't meddle in her mother's (past) life; she has to let her have bad experiences and grow up to be who she is destined to be. But it's not coincidental that, in the course of learning these lessons, my fictional daughter lives in a world completely controlled, defined and circumscribed by me.

What's as interesting as Warner's interesting piece is the reaction from readers: the comments section is filled with stories of well-remembered pain and a sense of its injustice that never goes away, even if it fades. (That headline quote comes from one of these readers.) There's something about that age, on the cusp of childhood, that's particularly vulnerable. (There's a reason they made a movie, 13, abut this very period.) Yesterday, talking about Tavi the pre-teen blogger, we editors reminisced about our own 13-year-old accomplishments and the wondrous potential of that age. In fact, it's a time I try to avoid thinking about, since it's when the cozy cocoon of childhood broke and I found myself the target of casual mockery on a daily basis. It's funny: I had not acknowledged that for years; I'd blocked 7th grade completely from my consciousness. But it's when I went from self-assured and oblivious to aware that I was unattractive and tiny and ridiculous with my piping voice and big vocabulary. I remember primarily a sense of bewildered inadequacy, a wish to go unnoticed in the halls or the lunchroom and avoid a jibe or a throwaway remark that my antagonists surely forgot as soon as I was out of sight. Most people didn't bother to be cruel, but there were enough. I'm reminded, if forced to think about that time, of the humiliating day when it all became too much and I broke down sobbing in class and was sent home, a victim. And I cease to feel like a normal-looking adult with a career and a basically-average height, and become a nonentity. This isn't even a particularly traumatic case - it's more average than not. Certainly not a horror story, and no cousin to the very real tragedies that we see week after week. But even now, thinking of those days of timing my trips through the halls so as to avoid other kids, or slipping into a seat just as class started so no one would have a chance to make fun of me, causes the base of my skull to tighten with a well-remembered tension.

Warner wishes both to spare her daughter that pain and reconnect with her younger self, and she's clearly not alone: when one looks at the adult women questioning the work of a 13-year-old girl, it's hard not to wonder if they, too, have scars dating back to that age. And wondering, per that commenter's remark, where they and so many other successful women fell on the bullying/victim spectrum.

40 Is Not The New 12 [NY Times]

Earlier: Elle Editor Leads Backlash Against 13-Year-Old Fashion Blogger

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

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

• Waiting, with Diane Von Furstenberg, for Mayor Bloomberg to arrive in Queens, Anna Wintour said, "If he doesn't show, Diane and I will run on a joint ticket and take over the city." Was that a...joke? Then Lindsay Lohan stole.

• The new Emanual Ungaro creative consultant thingamajig dutifully turned up at the Ungaro store for Fashion's Night Out, selected a leather jacket that met with her approval, and headed for the door. Sales assistants ripped off the tags. [NYDN]
• Yesterday afternoon, Gwen Stefani watched her own presentation, for her L.A.M.B. clothing line, from the audience. It took a while for anybody to recognize her, but once they did, she was mobbed — unusually, for fashion week, where everyone generally pretends not to notice the celebrities, and the celebrities wearily pretend not to notice that they're studiously being not noticed. Also Stefani and husband Gavin Rossdale made out. [The Cut]
• Claudia Schiffer, 39, has posed for an unretouched fashion cover and spread in Tank magazine. However, she is wearing makeup. [Telegraph]
• 13-year-old style blogger Tavi will be front row — with her dad — at Rodarte, due to her friendship with designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy. Tavi, who's on the cover of the current issue of Pop, is also reporting on the shows for the magazine. But the best part? She shops at Loehmann's with her mom. [WSJ]
• Eric Gaskins, the ex-designer behind the formerly anonymous blog The Emperor's Old Clothes, has a book deal and a television show in the works. [WWD]
• Last night, Zac Posen doused and stenciled four cream colored dresses worn live by model Anna Cleveland with paint. Because Fashion's Night Out is all about a) wearing pink leopard print capes to make grand entrances and b) stripping down to a tee shirt and getting one's hands dirty to "make people connect with the creative process." [USAToday]
• Nobody wanted to play Wii tennis with designer Chris Benz. And Justin Timberlake hid for an hour from screaming fans inside the bridal salon at Saks. [NYObs]
• Giorgio Armani says he has made a complete recovery from hepatitis. [AP]
• Peter Som, nobody should consider bread, chocolate, and cheese to be "guilty pleasures"! [GlamChic]
• The design duo behind label Libertine, Cindy Greene and Johnson Hartig, have split up. Hartig will take control over the line, and "return to its roots." [WWD]
• Vena Cava designers Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai have two special guests in from California at each one of their presentations: their mothers. [The Cut]
• Monique Lhuillier is pregnant, and due in November. She plans to name the daughter Sophia. Congratulations! [WWD]
• Life advice from Carolina Herrera: "You have to be so happy. You have to love what you are doing...life is complicated, but you have to make the best of it." [GlamChic]
• Remember how Thierry Mugler trumpeted his costume designs for Beyoncé's current tour? Turns out he may have had help from a high-profile freelancer, an experienced costume designer named Chris March. The Project Runway alum is suing Mugler for failing to pay for his services. March is also investigating starting his own line of women's wear with QVC. [WSJ]
• Dries Van Noten, after accepting his award from the Museum at FIT's Couture Council, asked to speak to FIT students. The hour-long Q&A covered everything from his aesthetic, design processes, and perspectives, to his business model. Van Noten founded his label without a backer, and remains self-owned today. "I don't have managers pushing me for fragrance licenses, but I'm informed. I know what Barneys is selling well. I'm known for flowers, but where others might be pressured to put a little bit of flowers in because that's what sells, I can still do a collection of black-and-white and checks," said the Belgian. [WWD]
• Tom Ford, on the release of his first film, A Single Man: "Of course I'm terrified because in a way it's the most personal thing I've ever done and it's the thing that is the most expressive of who I am." The main character, George, played by Colin Firth, is a middle-aged gay man who contemplates suicide following the death of his partner in a car crash. Ford says he based George's preparations for suicide on the actual suicide of a family member: "Someone did kill themselves in exactly that way — went to the store, bought a gun...went home and got a sleeping bag...laid everything out, got into the sleeping bag, zipped it up and killed himself because he didn't want to make a mess." Because it's an Isherwood adaptation, there will be lots of shots of men swimming naked, and playing tennis topless. [Reuters]
• The Buckle is continuing its peerless run of solid growth in sales and revenue, even during this recession. The retailer has now had ten consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth, and its second quarter net income rose 12%, to $25 million. [TS]
• Analysts are pleased by Ann Taylor's turnaround. Although the company announced a second quarter loss last month, stock has risen 21% since then. [Crain's]

• It's not just for the cameras! Bad Cop Project Runway judge Nina Garcia queen bees it up at MarieClaire, reups for Runway. [WWD]
• Oh I'm sure this wasn't staged: watch Heidi Montag's 'Heidiwood' clothes fly off the racks at the Kitson boutique while Heidi preens, poses and signs autographs in front of a conspicuous sign announcing that the Lauren Conrad line is half off. Then LC just happens to walk by. Cameras follow them both, natch. [TMZ]
• French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld could give a toss what PETA thinks. Well, except that she just did a whole defiantly pro-fur photo shoot to piss them off. [Fashion Intelligentsia]
• Despite mixed reviews, Christian Siriano's collection for Bluefly is almost sold out. [Sassybella]

• Prince Charles' garden-based "Highgrove" skincare line sells out too. [WWD]
• Shaun White, the red-haired snowboarder who's apparently known as "the flying tomato" has launched a young men's line for Target. "White's favorite piece is a black-and-white plaid button-down ($12.99 boys, $24.99 young adults) with contrast front pockets that would look at home in any skate park in America. He's also fond of the black skinny fit jeans ($29.99), having recently converted from a baggier silhouette. How tight are we talking? White doesn't like his jeans to be "ridiculously tight, unless the occasion calls for it." [Los Angeles Times]
• Cold comfort: Kate Moss's home has depreciated. [Independent]
• Whether or not Peter Som is leaving Bill Blass (and why is this so mysterious?!) he'll be showing at Fashion Week in a limited capacity. [ElleUK]
• Rem Koolhaas's new Prada Foundation's headquarters? Even more of "a cross between a Soviet housing complex, a prison, and a midwestern factory of the future." [Media Bistro]
• That 12-year-old fashion blogger? Now she's gonna be in the New York Times. [New York Magazine]
• Mischa Barton's handbags are now on sale. Why does everyone keep calling them "vintage-inspired?" [Asos]
• More on that "Marilyn Monroe" clothing line. You may not have heard of the company, "UK Manufacturer Blues Clothing," but it's still kind of a big deal: "The posthumous clothing label is the first fruit of the controversial 2007 court case which ruled that the actress's heirs no longer own the exclusive rights to her likeness." [The Independent]
• After studying in America, designer Adama Kargbo returned to her native Sierra Leone to start a fashion line called Aschobi “Sierra Leone isn't the first place you'd think of finding couture, but the country is changing.” [Global Voices Online]
• Hard times: Ralph Lauren alters pay structure. [WWD]
• Nike has pulled its Hyperdunk campaign after some people construed one ad as being homophobic. "The crotch of the player dunking was planted firmly in the other player's face. The ad sported a large tag line: "That Ain't Right." Earlier, Nike had said the ads were "based purely upon a common insight from within the game of basketball — the athletic feat of dunking on the opposition, and is not intended to be offensive.""Nike pointed to its record as a gay-rights advocate...but pulled the stupid-sounding poster, which I objected to on grammatical grounds. [CNN]
• Miguel Caballero, "the world's only producer of designer bulletproof fashion," has cornered the paranoid millionaire market. "His new collection includes blazers, raincoats and suede jackets, some replete with a comforting stab-proof lining. Customers get to select from three levels of ballistic protection. For instance, a polo shirt that can withstand a slug from a 9-mm revolver costs roughly $7,500; a version for about $9,800 protects wearers from automatic weapons, including mini-Uzis." Perhaps not surprisingly, Caballero got his start in Columbia, where the business has thrived. Switzerland, he says, is their worst customer. [Time]
• Say it ain't so! Crocs are losing their appeal, money. Best quote: "Made from a spongy material known as Croslite, Crocs have been worn by President Bush, Al Pacino and Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton." [Guardian]
• Purely theoretical musings on Justin Timberlake, fashion week. "Though JT has been scarce in front rows before, he may want to build his fashion cred now that he's the new face of Givenchy, and the backing behind sportswear label William Rast. And let's not forget that some brands pay very big money to get "fans" to attend their catwalks - and Miss Sixty, Rock & Republic, and Y-3 have a track record of getting crazy flashbulb momnts at their shows, and let's not forget Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger." [Fashionista]
• MAC collabs with Indian designer Manish Arora. "The line comprises a six-shade eye shadow compact, dubbed Eyes On Manish; two lipsticks; two hues of Lipglass, and two shades of Powder Blush." [WWD]
• More women choosing to go gray. Yay! [ Houston Chronicle]
• Celebrity Design 101: "You're not Coco Chanel." [New York Magazine]

• Paris Hilton, aka the rich man's Heidi Montag, premieres her line for Dollhouse. "Some pieces, like the tees with her face plastered on them, are quintessentially Paris, and others are a bit more rock 'n roll like her sister Nicky." Huh? [FabSugar]
• Meanwhile, in the world of the equally inexplicable, Jessica Simpson announces a dress line. "I'm extremely excited to be expanding into the dress market," Simpson tells WWD. "I plan on creating beautiful dresses in distinctive fabrics and silhouettes that are reflective of my personal style and offer something special to the marketplace." [VogueUK]
• Perennial charmer Naomi Campbell on upstart "supermodels": "Models need to earn their stripes – I just think the term is used a little too loosely. Kate Moss is obviously a supermodel but, after Gisele, I don’t think there’s been one." [The Sun]
• Um, if we're asking the pope to throw off antiquated traditions, I'm not sure his fur cape should be our highest priority. [Times of India]

• Recessionistas get all DIY; add beads to stuff. [Telegraph]
• Tsubi, or Ksubi, jeans founder Gareth Moody is apparently not that interesting. [New York Magazine]
• Paging 1984. "Nantucket preppy style." [Style.com]
• Can a nation with as much grinding poverty as India's justify a couture market? [Hindustan Times]
• Retailers get antsy about holidays; hope to distract customers with elaborate decorations. [WWD]
• Former Etsy Knits CEO changes title to "chief creative officer," "a nice loose moniker that will allow me to focus on what I'm best at: product work and long-term, big-picture thinking." [Alley Insider]
• Thought Crocs were the nadir? Meet FitFlops. [New York Magazine]
• Golfer Ryuji Imada hooks up with Lacoste. [WWD]
• Style.com gets a makeover. [Fashionista]
• Alert your mother at once! Dockers launches women's separates, so she and dad can match. [WWD]
• For some reason, Hermes thriving. [Forbes]
• Menswear shows sound horrifying: "Baggy shirts, wrinkled T-shirts, campus-throwback sweaters and boat shoes ruled at New York's nascent Mens Runway." [Reuters]
• New Diesel swimwear mixes "bikinis with props like baseball helmets, boxing gloves, football pads and other sports gear to tie in with the "collegiate varsity" theme in the brand's sportswear collection." [WWD]
• Unlike some of us who work online, apparently the "ShopBop girls" are really chic. [FabSugar]
• If you wanna see Mischa Barton's photo shoot, you're in luck: Nylon's starting podcasts. [Fashionista]
• Random teens for Bongo jeans? At least Perez is happy. [Perez Hilton]
• More on the Diesel/Viktor and Rolf marriage of convenience. [Sassybella]
• We're guessing the 12-year-old fashion blogger Tavi would have had contempt for us in middle school. [New York Magazine]
• Rachael Ray's non-status bag. [Radar]
• Short hair? All the crack. "But instead of the asymmetric (typically 60s) ‘pob’ made famous by Posh last year, the new bob hair style is more fashion forward thanks to YSL who has made the glossy, pudding bowl cut the look of next season." [ElleUK]