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

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

[New York, July 4. Image via INFDaily.]

• Wacko Jacko is teaming up with Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier to launch a new line this fall. The apparently delusional Frenchman says, “It’s the merging of the King of Pop with the king of fashion. Something explosive is going to happen.” Kitson, for some reason, has committed to carrying the line exclusively. Like all Michael Jackson news, this is somehow deeply depressing. [People]
• Um, Michael's sister Janet is also doing a line, apparently. Starting with lingerie. Insert "wardrobe malfunction" joke here. Oh, wait, Perez Hilton already did. [Perez Hilton]
• A spotlight fell on the head of a male model walking in Tom Ford's Milan show. Insert...no, don't. [Fashionista]
• Nelson Mandela has personally banned serenity-challenged Naomi Campbell from the stage of his 90th birthday concert! Campbell was wearing a "46664" baseball cap at the time of her arrest (Mandela's prison number during his 27-year stint behind bars and the emblem of his current anti-AIDS initiative), which Mandela found "disappointing" given that he personally counseled her following her last brush with the law/cellphone/maid. [Daily Mail]

• Perhaps Naomi will take comfort from this news: "...lawmakers are proposing to give supermodels their own category of work visa. This is especially bold because while easing the way for several hundred models to work during New York's Fashion Week, they must resolutely ignore the pleas of high-tech businesses seeking more visas for well-educated workers." [LA Times]
• "Consumer confidence hits 16-year low." [WWD]
• Dragon fruit is the latest snake oil. [New York Magazine]
• File under 'curiously appropriate meeting of psuedo-hipster mediocrities': Agyness Deyn is dating one of the Strokes. [Perez Hilton]
• Just when you thought they couldn't get any uglier: Crocs 2.0 [Blackbook]
• MAC, Emanuel Ungaro team up for new makeup line. [Gisele Bundchen about eating disorders is like talking with a pro athlete about steroids." [Newser]
• Expectant mother Angelina Jolie apparently has no need for the teeny-tiny black leather getup she wears in her new flick, Wanted. She's auctioning it at CharityFolks.com, where it's expected to fetch about three grand. Proceeds benefit a charity of Morgan Freeman's that helps communities prepare for natural disasters. [E!]
• Tom Ford flouts recession, beating sales budget by 100%. [IHT]
• "King of Bling" "Jacob the Jeweler" goes to jail for money-laundering. [WWD]
• Chinese sportswear's Olympic ambitions flouted. [Wall Street Journal]
• Fashionistas really, really need to stop talking politics. [Guardian]
• Parisian "concept store" Colette opens pop-up store in New York! [Fashionista]
• Brit It-girl and Gwen Stefani sorta-stepdaughter Daisy Lowe on her style: "Like a fairy pixie doll, but with a little bit of a vintage twist. Like a dirty fairy. I like to mix it up—old vintage fabric dresses with exotic Tibetan jewelry, flowers, headbands, that sort of thing." [Refinery29]
• After rough patch, Thierry Mugler on the upswing. [WWD]

The Good:
Loretta Lynn is, obviously, a law unto herself and this is how we like to see her: Regal, adorable, with just a hint of underlying steel.

Songwriter Madi Diaz has a great dress, cute date.

I'm no Strokes apologist, and I can't say I've ever given guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr. much thought beyond thinking that if you were going to do lead vocals in one song, "Last Nite" was a good one to have chosen. But he looks very dapper here. And, more to the point, warms the heart supporting his father, songwriter Albert Hammond, Sr.

Singer Lee Ann Womack looks crisp, extremely excited in white.

John Legend doing John Legend, convincingly.

The Bad:

Now, you could certainly mount the "Loretta Lynn" defense here: that Joan Jett is a law unto herself, not to be held to normal standards. I took this into account, though, and still thought she looked kinda creepy last night.

I, too, would probably use my hair as an impromptu tucker (that's the 19th c term for a little bodice cover-up) were I revealing the amount of cleavage of Johnny Rzeznik's date.

I thought long and hard about this one, because Natasha Bedingfield's getup is certainly not terrible, even leaving aside my expressed aversion for the color combination of purple and red, her unfortunate stance. Ultimately what damned her was the general disharmony of accessories, and a certain "offness" of proportion - the skirt was just slightly too long for that boat neck. (As a short person, I am obsessive about hemming. It can make or break, people! Half an inch!)

The Ugly:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The band Rouge.