• In a 90's flashback, Kate Moss sings on the Lemonheads track "Dirty Robot." It's mostly her Rex Harrisoning "You're a dirty robot" over an electronica track. Is moderately awesome. [Fashionologie via Dazed Digital]

• The Paris Museum, which is putting together an exhibit on the creation of the "Kate Moss myth," has postponed it due to the overwhelming body of submissions. [WWD]
• The new Bjorn Borg store in SoHo may seem like an odd recession gamble, but the brightly-hued panty-and-tennis emporio sure is cute! [Fashion Week Daily]
• The latest crop of H&M's Designers Against AIDS includes Dita Von Teese, Katy Perry, Yoko Ono, and Cyndi Lauper. Bring it! [Just Jared]
• Maybe it's karma? H&M sales are slightly up, prompting hopes of a rebound. [Reuters]
• Or maybe it's the runaway success of its Matthew Williamson collection? They've re-stocked! [Racked]
• The tanking economy has led to a new phenomenon of high-end discount retail: think Filene's, um, parlor? [Reuters]
• John Bartlett, who was, apparently, a major fashion bad boy for a while, now has a really grown-up apartment full of dogs. [WSJ]
• Ouch: Nordstrom posts a 32% profit decline. [The Street]
• And Eddie Bauer, around whom sales rumors are swirling, has more than doubled its losses. [The Street]
• And if you're hoping for a reprieve, stop reading: Nike's cutting 1,750 jobs worldwide. [MSNBC]
• Abercrombie and Fitch is still in free fall, re-strategising like mad. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, U.S.-made apparel prices, while down for April, are up for the year. [WWD]
• Necessity being the mother of globalization, Oscar de la Renta's hoping to boost worldwide sales by expanding to the Arabian Gulf. [WWD]
• Neither Soon-Yi Previn nor Mia Farrow will be called to testify in the Battle of the Nebbishes, Woody Allen versus American Apparel. Maybe because they have nothing to do with the case? [Reuters]< li>More previews of the Anna Wintour 60 Minutes interview! It's actually really dull! "It's very important to me that I look good when I go out publicly...I like looking at my clothes rack in the morning and deciding what to pick out. I enjoy fashion, Morley, I mean, I wouldn't be in this job if I didn't." [New York]
• Meanwhile, the editrice is teaming up with New York hizzoner Michael Bloomberg for an initiative to jump-start NYC retail. [WWD]
• We're only so-so excited about Tracy Feith's upcoming line for Target, which feels more fast and girlish than really adaptable. "Think super-short skirts, bloomer shorts and ruffled bikinis. Feith is known for his spirited, acid-floral prints and here, some are better than others." [LA Times]
• Talking "fast," Forever21 is rolling out a new "contemporary" line, Love21. Not sure what this means, as it's not like the current clothes are exactly "vintage." [Fabsugar]
• Jessica Hart, who apparently made waves (sorry) in the SI swimsuit issue, will be hitting the Victoria's Secret runway. But wait, we don't remember her appearance on The City! What did she do? [News.com.au]
• Speaking of The City! Is Olivia Palermo moving to Elle? But what about her special assignment to Paris? [New York Post]
• Read it and weep: some truly amazing vintage couture is going under the hammer in Paris in July. [WWD]
• Karl Lagerfeld was two hours late for a dinner in Venice. But doesn't he travel with his own boiled quail or something anyway? [Style.com]
• Louis Vuitton has funded artist Richard Prince's latest public installation: wrapping the Hong Kong Museum of Art in pulp fiction covers. [WWS]
• In concert with Cannes, Louis Vuitton is collaborating with Spanish actress Rossy de Palma on a $546 fan. We're sure Lagerfeld will eye it longingly, like a high school love. [WWD]

• Unlike her husband, who plans on doing zero promotional work for his Adidas line, Victoria Beckham is in New York to unveil a new 20 ft Emporio Armani ad at Macy's. [UPI]

• Posh is also expanding her fashion reach, manufacturing her dVb jeans in-house in London, and signing a new sunglasses deal with maker Cutler & Gross. [WWD]
• Around 200 people waited on the street for Michelle Obama to emerge from the US mission to the UN on Tuesday. The First Lady wore the same Tracy Feith dress she wore to a post-inaugural prayer breakfast in January. [WWD]
• Three words: Target. Anna. Sui. [WWD]
• Did Kate Moss really refuse to shake Agyness Deyn's hand in the receiving line at the Met ball on Monday? [Racked]
• And did Gisele Bundchen and Bar Refaeli — ex- and current girlfriend, respectively, of Leonardo DiCaprio — have a frosty encounter at the end of the night? That sounds kind of like the last party I went to, only it was on a tiny fire escape, not at the Temple of Dendur, and the awkward partner-in-common pairing was male, not female, and, oh yeah, nobody was wearing Versace. [The Observer]
• Madonna apparently says Jesus Luz's name in the Lamb of God pronunciation, not the From South America pronunciation. [WWD]
• Dasha Zhukova, a socialite who took over Katie Grand's job at Pop despite having no editorial experience, said at Rodarte's Met afterparty, "Are we in a basement? Because this is the chicest underground party I've been to. Literally, underground." The venue, the SubMercer, is indeed underground. Well done, Dasha. [Style.com]
• Pierre Cardin was hospitalized in Marseille after a fainting episode earlier this week. He is expected to be discharged today. What, you wonder, does Pierre Cardin amuse himself with in his twilight years? Why, the meticulous restoration of the chateau of the Marquis de Sade. [AP]
• The new issue of Worldwide Women's Wear Digest is out, for anyone who tires of fashion's efforts at self-parody. [WWWD]
• Simon Doonan of Barneys asked Stella McCartney what the deal is with her and jumpsuits when the designer made an appearance at the store in New York. "I love them because they're just so effortless," McCartney replied. She then mentioned that at the Met ball, to which she wore a jumpsuit, she required the assistance of a friend every time she needed to use the rest room. Effortless, indeed. [Fashionista]
• Barneys, meanwhile, is said to be looking to close two of its seven stores, including the one it opened just last year in Las Vegas. Rumors have flown as of late about the luxury retailer's troubles. [WSJ]
• Designer Antonio Berardi says it took three attempts to be accepted at Central St. Martins, England's top fashion school — but not because his work wasn't up to scratch (he was already working in John Galliano's atelier). "I was 18 stone [252 lbs] and people didn't really see me, even in class. And, then, all of a sudden it changed and that was equally weird." [Telegraph]
• Anya Hindmarch's London Pont St. store was burglarized on Monday, and the thieves made off with just under $70,000 worth of spring and summer stock. It is the sixth time Hindmarch's stores have been targeted. You might think she'd beef up security, no? [Vogue UK]
• In a surprise move, the bankrupt Filene's Basement chain will not be liquidated by its new owners. The much-beloved designer discounter, which sells unwanted end-of-season wares from department stores at significantly lower prices, found its business fell off as high-end department stores scrambling for customers practically matched Filene's level of discounting. But the new owners, Crown Acquisitions and the Chetrit Group, who picked up the chain for only $22 million, plan to inject $25 million into inventory and marketing. Their focus will be on what they see as Filene's Basement's core customer — city-dwellers looking for a bargain. "The weakest stores they had were in the suburbs," explained the head of Crown Acquisitions. [NY Post]
• A French e-tailer is allowing users to buy items from its site for any sum they wish — so long as it's over 1 Euro and they order a maximum of two. Since this is a recession, and all. [Reuters]
• Olivier Theyskens says all that talk about him becoming creative director of Halston, now that he's been let go from Nina Ricci, is just rumors. [The Cut]
• Serena Williams did three hours on the Home Shopping Network and moved 25,000 units of her clothing and accessories. Not bad for an afternoon's work. [PR Newswire]
• Marks & Spencer, Britain's biggest lingerie retailer, has decided that all you ladies with curves should pay an extra £2 for the privilege of wearing anything larger than their D-sized bras. [Daily Mail]
• Model Katie Fogarty, on Internet folks watching videos of her fall on the Prada runway: "Whatever lightens people's days!" We're glad she sees it as a no harm, no foul situation. (And we're especially glad Fogarty didn't actually come to any harm during that mishap.) [Teen Vogue]
• True Religion jeans reported a 10% jump in earnings for the first quarter of this year, on the back of a 19% iincrease in sales. [The Street]
• Steve Madden's earnings for the same period jumped 68%. Profits were $6.6 million. [WWD]
• Kenneth Cole lost $8.2 million in the same quarter. Sales decreased by 16%. [The Street]

See, fashion is an industry based on image. Do you follow? Because, W has noticed, one of the effects of this is that people who work in fashion tend to be judged on how they dress. Kind of a lot, even. So many of them take the question of what to wear very seriously! And journalists, well, they find it interesting to write about in great detail without even a hint of the broader economic outlook or the narrowness of the audience that regularly wears $300 t-shirts from The Row and Lanvin flats.

Journalist Vanessa Lawrence's premise is almost too simple to be believed. "Working in fashion," she writes, "necessitates being fashionable from the moment you leave the house. And it is an implicit requirement that can prove exhausting for even the most passionate of clotheshorses....But when the weekend rolls around, they are faced with a dilemma: how to keep up appearances while giving their Yves Saint Laurent Tributes and Balenciaga sheaths a breather-if they choose to do so. Between trips to the gym, brunch dates and grocery store excursions, that 48-hour stretch is hardly a time for hibernation."

That's right. When you work in fashion, in addition to needing always to look your best, you might need to dress differently on different occasions. For instance, the weekend. Or the Hamptons! And any forays to distant nations — like the Upper East Side of New York, also known as "10021 land," where people wear these things called "blazers" and look "decked." What's a fashion worker bee to do?

Weirdly enough, everyone Lawrence quotes still seems to dress really well on the weekends. "When I'm in the Hamptons getting stuff at Citarella on the weekends, I'll see fashion girls who are in Marni and Lanvin in the daytime and I'm in a Tracy Feith cotton dress, Jack Rogers sandals and a ponytail," says designer Shoshanna Gruss, whose idea of 'weekend casual' is wholly relative. Others seem not to grasp Lawrence's issue: "French people don't really ‘underdress' on the weekends," remarks a confused Julia Restoin-Roitfeld.

There are plenty of moments of hilarity as the reporter valiantly tries to get a handle on the problem of what to wear in one's off hours. "Gruss's appropriately pulled-together look extends beyond Long Island summers to her Upper East Side residence," writes Lawrence; what range.

The thing is, anyone who spends a lot of time with magazine editors and stylists and General Fashion Personages knows a few things. For one, most of them do not have a lot of money — certainly not enough to be dropping $800 on stilettos every season. (Whether you've got a friendly quid pro quo going with a label's PR depeartment, or something occasionally goes missing from the styling closet is another issue.) For another, most of these people wear the same things every day. All-black ensembles are the norm, not the exception — because it's easy to look stylish in a dark monochrome, and you can switch out accessories without anything clashing, which is crucial if you spend a lot of time traveling and need to look like you have more outfits than you actually do. There are remarkably few people in fashion who consistently dress in ways that turn heads; pretty much everyone just wants to be stylish and look as nice as they can while they're working.

Which is fine, and normal, and fun — and the total opposite of the sort of sartorial-psychological weekend arms race Lawrence's article conveniently invents and then lavishes with attention, perpetuating the myth that all fashion folk are better-dressed than anyone else, and at all times. The real story is told in the pictures that accompany it: they're little images of the article's subject, photographed going about their daily lives, working in the fashion industry. Nobody looks bad — there's Charlotte Ronson at an event in a white dress and a black cardigan; Restoin-Roitfeld in denim shorts, a blue Oxford, and a blazer; Kate Etter in ballet flats, leggings, a green tunic and a long sweater. But nobody looks "fancy" or as purposefully styled as Lawrence's article implies is the industry norm. These look like outfits that have been doing reliable service in various forms for seasons already, and which will continue to see the light of day for a long time into the future. Bags and shoes might wash over Bryant Park like a tide each season, but a good pair of black pants is for the ages. And even people who work in fashion have enough good sense to know they can be worn on the weekends and to work.

Cartoon illustration via W

Weekend Warriors [W]

• Vivienne Westwood wants to write the sequel to the Sex and the City movie. Westwood, who critiqued Patricia Field's costumes, is "obsessed" and has allegedly contacted producers and SJP about the scenario. [Telegraph]

• Oy. Goody's Family Clothing has gone under. [WSJ]
• Ooh, this is good! Tracy Feith is the next Go! for Target designer, premiering in May. [WWD]
• Purple is apparently big — again — for spring. [USA Today]
• Thank goodness: Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Michael Kors are, at least, doing full runway shows in February. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, Oscar de la Renta single-handedly saves the day by adding an additional show! [Fashion Week Daily]
• Estee Lauder ad is pulled after people complain that it doesn't actually "make wrinkles disappear instantly." [Telegraph]
• Carolina Herrera: "Long hair after 40 is out in my book as it looks too messy and too young. Women need to learn how to age gracefully." But what about a classic bun?! [Times of London]
• Struggling Liz Claiborne hires a new president of retail. [WWD]
• Kirsten Dunst's hipster-fab lookbook for Scott Sternberg sounds...um, boring. "A soundless montage of Kiki dressed in Boy’s louche, preppy Spring collection walking across a white seamless at an almost dreamy clip." [StyleFile]
• American Apparel is only opening 16 stores this year — one fifth the number it opened last year. On the other hand, how amny AA-free blocks are left in the world? [Racked]
• The new $8 grand Stephen Sprouse-inspired Louis Vuitton skateboard comes in an LV case that has less street cred than anything we've ever seen. [The Life Files]
• Drew Barrymore's bizarre, dry "puffy cloud hair" is, allegedly, a trend. [ElleUK]
• So, turns out Rachel Zoe styled both Kate and Anne for the Bride Wars premiere. “Kate had this idea in her head. She wanted to play off the whole bridal theme of the movie and do full-on and do something over the top. It had the drama of a bridal gown but it wasn’t totally bridal...It was Annie’s idea to do a tuxedo and my initial reaction was that they were going to look like a bride and groom…and she liked that.” [WWD]