• Eva Longoria's perfume ad is a total Photoshop of Horrors. "I have always been somewhat allergic to all perfumes," admitted the actress. The scent was produced with the Falic Group, the company that recently shuttered Christian Lacroix. Priorities. [WWD]

• Phi, the edgy, six-year-old New York-based label, is closing its doors due to the recession. The spring collection shown at fashion week in September will not go into production; the pre-spring collection that just shipped will be Phi's last. Founder Susan Dell is the wife of tech billionaire Michael Dell; it's perhaps a little odd that she didn't want to reinvest to keep the widely acclaimed company afloat. Thirty-five employees learned they were losing their jobs yesterday; the C.E.O. says there will be a warehouse sale in January. [WWD]
• P. Diddy even gave Madame Tussaud's a bottle of his "I Am King" cologne with which to douse his new wax figure, for verisimilitude. [Spoiled Pretty]
• The four stars of Sex And The City will each get their own cover of Marie Claire, but that's absolutely not because they can't stand to be in one room together. [NYDN]
• A New Zealand fashion blogger who was invited to the America's Next Top Model Cycle 14 finale runway show — which took place last week in Auckland — but didn't go posted a shot of the invitation. Turns out Anna Sui is the featured designer. [IsaacLikes]
• "She already has a great handbag collection. She has a mirrored Fendi bag. And she'll say things like, 'I'm not going to wear that any more.' She has really good style as well. She knows what she likes and I can't force her to wear anything she doesn't, which is annoying sometimes. But now I rarely go shopping without her. She tells me what she doesn't like or she'll say: 'Mummy, you look nice' or 'that dress is amazing!' She's got it." Kate Moss, on daughter Lila Grace, 7. [Company via Daily Express]
• Agyness Deyn maybe made out with a dude at a club during Saturday night's snowstorm. Hot. [P6]
• "Giving back" is one way to characterize guest judging Project Runway, Catherine Malandrino. "I can give good advice and be an inspiration for the next generation. I think everyone in life needs direction and models." [HoustonChronicle]
• Thakoon Panichgul unveiled his first jewelry collection for the Japanese pearl brand Tasaki. It features lots of big pearls on rods. Prices range from about $6,000 to just under $40,000. [WWD]
• CFDA Award winner Sophie Théallet — whose dresses Michelle Obama has worn on more than one occasion — followed a traditional route into the industry, working for well over a decade in Paris and New York for established designers before founding her own label. (It became faddish during the 2000s to proclaim your design vision to the world immediately upon graduation from fashion school, à la Proenza Schouler, or even after dropping out, à la Alex Wang.) Jean-Paul Gaultier and Azzedine Alaïa were among her employers. "Gaultier taught me to stop at nothing and Alaia gave a taste for rigor," says Théallet, now based in Brooklyn. [Telegraph]
• Vivienne Westwood's wallpaper collection features her signature loud prints. [Vogue UK]
• A Racked tipster thinks this "Italian Appeal" store has a logo that looks too similar to the American Apparel trademark. We don't quite see it. [Racked]
• Karl Lagerfeld designed a doll with a spectacularly ugly dress, and a life-sized matching dress for little girls. They cost $315 and $1,190, respectively. Part of the proceeds will go to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's charity. [WWD]
• In ten years of operation, online discounter Bluefly.com has never turned a profit. For the quarter ended September 30, its sales fell 14% on the same period last year, despite overall rising online sales this year. It is receiving a $15 million investment from Rho Ventures, and is reducing its inventory. [WWD]

• Jessica Simpson's swimwear line is here! Simpson says it's inspired by the jet-setting getaways she dreams about. [Stylelist]
• Since snow ruined the last shopping weekend before Christmas for the Northeast, expect stores to offer extended hours and other enticements. [WWD]

• In September, a hacker allegedly accessed Condé Nast's server and downloaded 1,100 files. Two months later, the blog Fashionzag posted some of the stolen content: five alternate covers of the December issue of GQ, and pages from Vogue, Teen Vogue, and Lucky. The company is suing to determine the identity of the blogger behind Fashionzag, and for unspecified damages. [WWD]
• Rodarte's line for Target is still available at many stores in a full range of sizes, but many pieces are sold out online, leading to the inevitable eBay price-gouging. [Racked]
• UK Elle is reporting a rumor that Taylor Momsen, of Gossip Girl fame, might be the new face of the fast fashion chain New Look. [UK Elle]
• Meanwhile, the show's costume designer, Eric Daman, says "statement bracelets" and painterly prints are going to be big trends next year. You know he can make it happen. [NYPost]
• Karl Lagerfeld made a kind of cute little film where Lara Stone and Baptiste Giabiconi are two well-dressed shoplifters who make off with all the goods they want from Paris area Chanel boutiques. If it only included getaway shots — the couple jumps on a Chanel motorbike, natch — it would be adorable, but Lagerfeld just can't resist moving the camera inside for some lingering dressing-room inaction, which, combined with the man's execrable sense of pacing, bogs the whole thing down. [SB]
• Why, oh why, must a fabulous-sounding photography book called Backstage Dior by the legendary backstage photographer Roxanne Lowit cost $125? Sigh. [NYTimes]
• Vivienne Westwood is launching a denim line! Unfortunately, it will cost at least as much as that book. [WWD]
• Tag Heuer will not run any ads featuring Tiger Woods in the U.S. market for the near future. [CBS]
• However, Woods will remain a face of the brand, the company stresses. [WWD]
• Oscar de la Renta won back the rights to his own fragrance license from L'Oréal, after an 18-month legal battle. [WWD]
• Did Claudia Schiffer receive special treatment on the stricken Eurostar whose engine failed just after the train emerging on the English side of the Channel tunnel? Other passengers are reporting that they saw a car drive right up to the train and collect the model, who frequently travels first-class on Eurostar between London and Paris on business. [Telegraph]
• Balenciaga is suing Steve Madden for allegedly copying its 2007 "Sportiletto" shoe. [Cityfile]
• Loïc Prigent, one of our favorite fashion documentarians, made a six-episode series, Habillees, about the search for new French design talent. And he captured Anna Wintour disparaging France's support for the next generation of designers: "I think it's totally important for all of us in the American fashion industry to support the young designers, and I think that's why New York's become such a vibrant fashion center, because people go there not only to see the Donna Karans of the world but a whole new generation. I'm just so sorry that there isn't something like that in Paris that's similar. I think that they should look for the younger generation here [in Paris] as well. Not only New York but London really supports their young talent; Franca Sozzani at Italian Vogue supports the young Italian designers, and I think when France is so known for its fashion industry — for them not to be reaching out to help younger people today is really a shame." Although New York and London each have cash awards and mentorships available to some of their young designers, to say that Franca Sozzani single-handedly puts emerging Italian designers on the map is rather a stretch. Which gives the impression this was a meandering way to get in a dig at Carine Roitfeld. [Fashionologie]
• It's the American way to turn nurturing emerging talent into mass entertainment. Robin Givhan dedicates her weekly column to Christian Siriano, who is now three collections out from winning Project Runway. [WaPo]
• Australians are apparently surprised that Louis Vuitton has found a way to sell a plain old polyamide/elastane bikini — and not even a cute one — for over a thousand dollars. [News.com.au]
• Meanwhile, we have to contend with $2,995 custom-made Proenza Schouler surfboards. And it's not even summer up here. [NYTimes]

[Tokyo, November 25. Image via Getty]

A Model displays a weddingdress during a collection of British designer Vivienne Westwood at a boxing stadium in Tokyo on November 25, 2009. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO (Photo credit should read YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images)

• Michelle Trachtenberg is designing a line of jewelry for Coach's Poppy brand. Expect "colorful crystals." [WWD]
• Zac Posen is doing a lower-priced line, Z Spoke, which will be available exclusively through Saks Fifth Avenue come spring. It starts at $78:

• And it's a marked departure from his evening wear-heavy main line. "It's not Zac-for-less, it's not the little sister collection at all," says the designer. "The dresses — that's something I can do with my eyes closed. This is about a new identity." Hopefully that new identity includes solvency, given Posen, subject to continued rumors about his company's financial status, was forced to lay off staff recently. [WWD]
• Why is Cintra Wilson reviewing the Fifth Avenue Armani store now? That opened months ago. And it was extensively covered and reviewed in the Times back then. [NYTimes]
• Sophie Theallet's friend and longtime supporter Rupert Everett is happy she won the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund Award. Theallet is going to collaborate again with Manolo Blahnik on her runway show footwear for next February, and this time, some styles will be available in stores. [WWD]
• Some "legendary" male models we've never heard of (OK, male models we have heard of comprise exactly Tyson Beckford and that guy who was in Calvin Klein ads before he played Samantha's boyfriend on Sex And The City) are in this month's VMAN. [Independent]
• Claudia Schiffer has been thinking more about that clothing line she mooted a week or so back. "I have no definite first product in mind, but I would love to do cashmere. It's something I wear all the time myself, but I'd love to do something a bit more price-friendly. Plus a lot of cashmere lines are very classic and timeless, while I'd want to do it a bit more fashion. Or I could imagine doing handbags." You know. Cashmere. Or handbags. [WWD]
• If you need a fresh reason to hate the fashion industry this morning, how about an over-privileged under-informed 17-year-old heaping scorn on Luella's closure, and bragging about how she has, like, a ton of Lacroix — in the garage? Jane Aldridge probably kisses her Vogue portrait before going to bed each night. Right after inclining her head to say her prayers to Anna. [Fashionista]
• Vivienne Westwood says of the same closure, "It's very sad, but English fashion will survive, and be stronger." [Style.com]
• A four-day auction of the last contents of Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent's home has begun in Paris. Everything from the chandeliers to the pots and pans is for sale, some 1,185 objects in all. [Breitbart]
• Lanvin has attracted a minority investor. An unnamed entity, believed to be a European family, has bought a 12.5% stake in the business, for an estimated tens of millions of Euros. Last year, sales at Lanvin rose 29%. [WWD]
• Apparently it takes £230 worth of creams to look like Jane Birkin, along with Clarins and Dr. Hauschka makeup. And we always thought her so low maintenance and carefree. [Daily Mail]
• Birkin's daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg may be the face of the new Balenciaga perfume, but that won't stop Olivier Zahm from photographing the bottle between the breasts of a topless mannequin. Stay classy, Olivier! [FWD]
• John Bartlett, the recently fired men's wear designer for Liz Claiborne, has announced a collaboration with Alex Carleton of Rogues Gallery. RG/JB will launch in December at John Bartlett's Greenwich Village store, and will include a handcrafted leather log carrier and bankers' envelopes. Sounds practical. [WWD]
• Porsche is bringing back Yoko Ono's favorite sunglasses. [Luxist]
• A Gap store in Vancouver turned itself upside down to sell shoppers on a new kind of reward program called, for some reason, Sprize. They hung all the mannequins from the ceiling and turned the signage upside-down, but what you really need to know is this: Sprize reimburses you the cost difference automatically if merchandise you buy full-price later goes on sale. It's like everything you ever buy will be on sale. And it's not in the U.S. yet why??? [BrandFreak]
• Rosita and Tai Missoni seem like an adorable old couple. [Scotsman]
• Expect Burberry handbags, shoes and belts, as well as children's wear, in the near future. [Reuters]
• In coordination with something called cryptically "more trees," Louis Vuitton is paying 10 million yen (about $112,000) to reforest a 104-hectare area of land in Japan, to be known as the Louis Vuitton Forest. (Insert your own where-handbags-grow-on-trees joke.) [Japan Tourism]

• Designer Sophie Théallet has won the $200,000 Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund Award. "Thank you for making my American dreams come true," said she. [Style.com]
• Skating at an outdoor rink in London, Lily Cole knocked over a small child. [Daily Mail]

• Adriana Lima and Marko Jaric have announced the birth of their baby daughter, Valentina. With Heidi Klum's and Karolina Kurkova's babies, that makes three Victoria's Secret newborns, so far. (Gisele Bundchen is due in December — like Jourdan Dunn, who isn't a Victoria's Secret girl but is a damn awesome model.) So, in about 15 years, maybe we should expect an invasion of new models with perfect pedigrees. [People]
• Here are the first pictures of Comme des Garçons' Beatles collaboration line. We are still not sure why this exists. [Racked]
• Says Rihanna: "In the past few months I've done a lot of research in the fashion world because I wanted to work with a bunch of designers that are kinda underground, people who aren't the obvious...My style is very edgy, very daring. I like to take risks — I hate to do the obvious." [Grazia]
• Pascal Mouawad, who yesterday Lindsay Lohan claimed to be working with on a jewelry line, is today unequivocal: "This is not happening." Sorry, LiLo. [WWD]
• Kate Moss's fourth fragrance, Vintage, is not, we repeat not, coming to the United States. [People]
• Chanel Iman says her one-day "internship" at Teen Vogue "wasn't really planned. I was going in for my fitting for the Teen Vogue cover. I just started helping around the office, organizing the closet. It led from one hour to the next, then it was my fitting and that stopped and I started interning again. I'm a girl that loves to keep busy no matter what it is, being paid or not." Real interns tend to do more than just fill the downtime between fittings — and they also tend to prefer getting paid to not. [NYDN]
• Gemma Ward, in an e-mail to an Australian newspaper, clarified that she has not quit modeling, and that she expects to return to modeling and acting next year. Her mother, meanwhile, says the Aussie supermodel is considering studying drama at Yale. [SB]
• Marc Jacobs, on the differences between Paris and New York: "I'm most at home in New York. I have so many friends and such a large creative community that I feel I'm a part of here. So my work in New York is very influenced by my personal relationships and what I'm doing, and what the people on my team are doing, while Paris is a bit of a bubble, a fantasy. It's almost like I'm pretending to be a designer in Paris. I just think, ‘What would a French designer do?'" [WWD]
• Vivienne Westwood held her spring Anglomania show in a carpark outside a Selfridges in London. [Telegraph]
• Didn't spikes and studs on footwear reach saturation point sometime last winter? Our tolerance is certainly pricked. [The Cut]
• Adidas has announced that in conjunction with Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, it will manufacture shoes for the developing world in Bangladesh. The target price for the final product, which Adidas is making without profit? €1, or about $1.50 at current exchange rates. [Telegraph]
• In our mixed-up, topsy-turvy modern world, why not buy spring clothes in November? Phoebe Philo's debut collection for Céline is already on sale, in a customized space at Dover Street Market. [Independent]
• Donna Karan would not approve. She thinks shopping for clothes during the season they are intended to be worn makes a certain kind of sense, because otherwise those clothes go on sale during the season they are intended to be worn, which from her perspective is much worse. "We're not talking to the consumer, we're talking to ourselves," says the designer. "When it's cold out, let's warm the customer. When it's hot out, let's be able to the cool the customer. This isn't nuclear science. Don't deliver fall clothes until back-to-school — do you remember that old logo, back-to-school? — [in] September, when the leaves start to change. Now the leaves are changing, but our seasons are changing because we're already shipping resort." [WWD]
• Prada's book party was probably the most fashionable book party, ever. [People]
• Miuccia Prada: "When people think of fashion, they prefer to see the crazy side, the clichéd side, and actually I think that is wrong. Fashion is an important part of a woman's life. It's a question of aesthetics and that is in no way stupid or superficial." Also: those black nylon bags Prada became famous for in the 90s cost more than comparable leather ones because it took her three years to "learn how to work with" nylon, OK? [Independent]
• Stella McCartney says she has felt uncomfortable with the notion of working in fashion, too. "I was a bit embarrassed by the word ‘fashion,'" she said at a summit on luxury hosted by Women's Wear Daily; McCartney calls herself "an infiltrator" of the industry. Working without animal products has caused its own set of problems: when Tom Ford, then at Gucci, initially approached McCartney about her becoming part of the company, he said her working without fur would be no problem, but when she replied that she also works without leather, "his face just went white and his jaw dropped to the ground." And then there's the expense: "t costs us up to 70 percent more to make a pair of shoes than any other brand - we take that on the chin; we don't mark it up for the customer. Coming into the States, we have nearly a 30 percent import duty for nonleather goods, which I think of as kind of medieval." Fifty million animals are killed for leather production every year. [WWD]
• Nintendo DS has a game called Style Savvy, in which you play a store manager helping customers find outfits that suit their style and their budgets. (Nintendo: now preparing children for retail drudgery!) Charlotte Ronson's fall 2009 collection is included as an optional download. [SB]
• Renaud Dutreil, the chairman of LVMH's U.S. arm, bicycles to work every day. [WWD]
• The Gap has come under fire from a Christian group that accuses it of failing to use the word "Christmas" in its holiday advertising and mailings. The Los Angeles Times points out the many layers of hypocrisy present in this argument — and the fact that the Gap, in addition to selling Christmas-themed merchandise, does mention Christmas in its holiday TV spot. [LATimes]
• So Oakley has some top-secret cadre of sunglass engineers who are encouraged to come up with the most technologically advanced sunglasses you have never imagined, with cost no object. This is why $4,000 carbon-fiber sunglasses exist. (Unfortunately, they are still ugly.) [BW]
• Evidently Vanity Fair needs some pageviews. So they went to the drawing board and came back with...sexy pictures of supermodels. That'll work. [VF]
• Burberry reported a 24% decline in its profits for the six months to September 30, compared with the same period last year. This was better than expected. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, Saks enjoyed a profit during the third quarter. Surprise profits must be the best kind of profits. [TS]
• The "Kardashian KCollection," which the sisters K put together for Virgins, Saints and Angels, is reportedly "inspired by their Armenian heritage." Their forebears seem to have liked spikes. A lot. [Racked]

• Rumors are flying that Lindsay Lohan is donating her time (except for any free clothes she snags) as Emanuel Ungaro's new "artistic director." This gossip item, however, doesn't spell "Emanuel Ungaro" correctly, so its veracity may be questionable. [Fox 411]

• Ungaro C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige says Lohan's pay is "quite enough. It's expensive." Before hiring her, he told the press he asked her how much time she intended to spend in jail this year; her unpredictability, he says, "has been factored in" to her compensation. [ToL]
• The New York Times' Horacio Silva says he just had a talk with Renzo Rosso, who is "thisclose to naming a new designer at Martin Margiela." Margiela's departure from his namesake house was only confirmed recently, after months of speculation. In a follow-up tweet, Silva says Rosso maintains Margiela will still be involved in the house. Haider Ackermann and Raf Simons have been mentioned as possible contenders for Margiela's old job. [Twitter]
• What if a luxury label opened a store, and nobody bothered to turn up? [Shophound]
• Diane Von Furstenberg tweets from Madrid: "I just got robbed in the street in front of the Thyssen museum... My wallet, cash and all my credit cards!!" [Twitter]
• Two Bravo executives described the network as "desperate" to get a reality TV deal with Marc Jacobs. Their pitch? A no-strings-attached everyday doc. "Just live his life, his amazing life, and let us shoot it," said Andy Cohen. "I mean, just go. Just go! Open your eyes, let us put the tape in the camera, and let us go." [The Cut]
• Mo Rocca on the future of fashion? Hell. Yes. [CBS]
• Number of times Time mentions Crystal Renn was a "size-0 model": 3. Number of times Time mentions she had anorexia: 0. [Time]
• Karl Lagerfeld: "My father…was not stingy but he hated unnecessary expense but clothes he saw as the exception — he was of a different generation — if you were well dressed, half of the job was done. So I was told, be well dressed and doors will open." [i-D via Fashionista]
• Can you imagine David Spade, Anthony Kiedis, Fred Durst, and Ron Burkle hanging out at a Zac Posen show? Us neither. L.A. is so weird. [Style.com]
• Oscar de la Renta was presented with an award by Grace Coddington and Hamish Bowles. [Yahoo]
• At the same event, Barneys creative director/author Simon Doonan said, "For years, all my writer friends would say to me, what the fuck are you doing working in a store every day? And now they're saying to me, how can I get a job in a store?" This is because "There's nothing at the moment that is worse-compensated than freelance writing. NOTHING. You can get more money panhandling on the street. It's shocking." We'd agree but we're now too depressed to move. Simon Doonan works for a C.E.O.-less department store with stock about eighteen zillion levels below investment grade, a department store so consistently subject to rumors of bankruptcy that its parent company periodically has to step in to remind everyone that it guarantees the (giant, growing, pile of) debt. And even he has it better than we do. [Daily Intel]
• Meanwhile, Doonan says he finds the recession "a colossal bore." [WWD]
• Martin Lingstrom, a brand strategist, spent three years hooking up over 2,000 people to sensors that monitored their physical and neurological responses to advertising and shopping. He says that, while deciding to buy something, our brains release dopamine. However, then there's the guilt: "It's not very strong at the beginning but increases when you swipe your credit card through the credit-card reader." That feeling is physiological. Instead of reaching the obvious conclusion from his data — shopping is against nature, a pattern of unhealthy addiction and guilt-ridden behaviors, and everyone in fashion is totally fucked — Martin Lingstrom apparently still works as a brand strategist. [WSJ]
• The Wall Street Journal tried out Christian Louboutin and Piper Heidsieck's Le Rituel, the $5,000 glass slipper intended to serve as a champagne flute. The verdict? "It takes some finesse, balance, and you can't fill it very high with bubbly...It has its charm, but drinkers of champagne mat opt to keep their flutes handy." Imagine that. [WSJ]
• Alexander Wang says he staged his first fashion show when he was 15, at his brother's wedding. "It was like 35 looks or something. We hired hair and make-up and everything." [Independent]
• Heidi Klum is launching a fashion line. The footwear collection, all 48 styles, will be available starting next fall; to follow will be swimsuits and casual wear. [WWD]
• Claudia Schiffer, on the supermodels comeback: "One of the logical reasons would be that we sort of went away at the same time and most of us had kids at the same time and then we sort of came back. We've also worked for such a long time, we are reliable and professional and you know what you'll get." [Independent]
• Schiffer, who was once unceremoniously dropped by Karl Lagerfeld, during the grunge days, has been spotted with the designer around Buenos Aires. They, along with Baptiste Giabiconi and Freja Beha Erichsen, are shooting the next Chanel campaign. Local media reports that they ate "rich barbecue" for lunch one day. [Fashionologie]
• Vivienne Westwood made a series of gowns for Leona Lewis. In exchange, the pop star will wear the dramatic metallic corseted creations in all the promotional materials for her new album and single. [Telegraph]
• Odds Costume Rental, which supplied costumes for 22 years to productions like Law & Order and Road to Perdition, has filed for bankruptcy. Rising rent is one culprit — the business was hit with a $5,000/month increase last year — and the willingness of designers to give their clothes away to film and television shows is another. [Crains]
• Salvatore Ferragamo is entering the online retail market. [WWD]

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

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

• Giorgio Armani might be made Senator for Life (a real position) by the Italian president. The designer would then vote on the national budget, and "beautify" parliamentary proceedings. Armani's reaction to the nomination, and his political leanings, were unknown. [WSJ]

• Pamela Anderson has got to be the driest wit in Hollywood. When the tabloid press asked her to name her style icon, she replied, "Humpty-Dumpty." Pressed on the subject of her perfumes, Malibu and Malibu Night, which will be sold only at drugstores starting this November, the actress said, "That is why I always smell so cheap." Then she pulled up her Vivienne Westwood bedsheet dress — it "came with a million safety pins, and Westwood told me to just pin it and knot it in a bunch of places" — and walked away. [P6]
• Then she wrote a hand-written note to Allure. "I've been offered fragrance contracts like everyone else and their dog (hey, that's that good idea, all natural, of course) but all the elements never came together — the stamp of approval from PETA; the environmental aspects. (I was a bit ahead of my time). But now it works!" And: "I worship drugstores, it's hard to get me out." [Allure]
• Karl Lagerfeld has been immortalized in a 25 cm vinyl doll. The best part? Mini Karl is mute. [DazedDigital]
• The best part about Betsey Johnson's award from the National Arts Club? Her portrait will soon hang among the Gramercy Park institution's other dusty luminaries. We can't decide if this maneuver raises the NAC's stock more than it depresses Johnson's — perhaps O. Aldon James, Jr., will write us a letter of explanation — but we still think it's pretty awesome. [WWD]
• Guiseppe Zanotti is obviously one of those people who pulls a face when posing next to a famous person. In this case, Blake Lively. Oh, isn't he wild and spontaneous! [People]
• Four words: Olsen twin sunglass line. [Elle UK]
• Charlize Theron is collaborating on a t-shirt line for a humanitarian cause. Give and Take Tees is releasing $42 vintage-inspired t-shirts, and half the proceeds will go to Theron's own Outreach Africa Project, which funds a mobile health center for rural South Africa. [People]
• Laura Mulleavy, of Rodarte: "I can think of this outfit we did like our fall '08 collection that was red and black and it was all just hairy, leather jacket and fur. For me, that collection was specifically about Japanese horror films and this idea of these girls coming from the ground and being tied down with twine with the hair dangling in their face, and just being completely just like this sunken girl that maybe got stuck in a well somewhere, and I don't know if that would translate into everyday life as I see it, but I don't think that's necessary. I don't know, maybe I am just creating for, you know, the one character that survives." [DazedDigital]
• Kanye West had been planning to launch a clothing line called Pastelle since even before he gave us the immortal lines, "So go 'head, go nuts, go ape shit/ Specially in my Pastelle or my Bape shit." Pictures from a lookbook shoot for the brand finally hit the Internet yesterday, only for Yeezy to announce he's scotching Pastelle as a brand entirely. It's as dead as his Gap collaboration. But there still may be a Kanye clothing line under his own name. [HighSnobiety]
• The bankrupt Germany fashion house Escada has reportedly attracted 10 different would-be buyers. Perhaps it's not too much to hope for a Christian Lacroix resolution here? [Forbes]
• The Limited is trying to claw its way back to brand relevance. It's starting by opening a pop-up store on Spring St. in SoHo, re-launching the discontinued brands Forenza and Outback Red, and hiring Jodi Arnold — as in MINT Jodi Arnold — as a "partner." Does this mean we'll see Jodi Arnold designs at The Limited prices? C.E.O. Linda Heasley, who test-drives unreleased garments herself, says the company is looking forward to its first profitable year in well over a decade. [WWD]

• Finally, it's confirmed: Heidi Klum gave birth to a girl, Lou Samuel, on October 9 in L.A. (Her siblings are Johan, 2½ Henry, 5 and Leni, 5.) Seal says:

"From the moment she looked into both of our eyes, it was endless love at first sight. She is beautiful beyond words and we are happy that she chose us to watch her grow over the coming years." [People, AP]

• Wait, is Sparkle Vamp Robert Pattinson not with Kristen Stewart? "Girls scream out for Edward, not Robert," the Twilight star sighs. "I still can't get a date." [People]
• Michael Lohan is trying to get Jon Gosselin to join the Celebrity Boxing Federation. "I am in the Celebrity Boxing Federation, so I had to go out to Philadelphia to meet with the chairman of the organization," Lohan says. "They asked me if Jon would fight, so I went up to Pennsylvania to visit Jon." So you're saying they used you to do their dirty work? [Us Magazine]
• "Jon and Kate Gosselin call 'truce' until their scheduled hearing about family's 'economic issues.'" [NY Daily News]
• Jon and Kate are in court this morning! Let the battle of the joint bank account cash begin. [TMZ]
• An ex-boyfriend of Madonna's former trainer, Tracy Anderson — who is also Gwyneth Paltrow's buddy — claims she swindled him out of $1 million and drove him into bankruptcy. The dude, Glynn Barber, says: "She used her female charms to manipulate me to invest $1 million in her company. I was an easy target. She told me she was a Power Ranger. She told me she was in the musical Cats for four years. She said her ex-husband, Eric, played for the Knicks… None of this turned out to be true." He adds: "I made Madonna's fitness equipment for $13,000 and Tracy sold it to her for $26,000. She made a fortune from using Madonna's name." [Page Six]
• Madonna is offering one of her favorite pairs of Christian Dior shoes to a charity supporting Gypsy child education. The "skyscraper" gold heels are autographed by Her Madgesty and will be sold at the Ovidiu Rom annual ball later this month. [AP]
• Penelope Cruz's ring is news, I tell you. News! [Page Six, Gatecrasher]
• Amy Winehouse is in a new relationship. She's been seeing a new guy for just over a month, and a source says, "He's good to her." [Digital Spy]
• Amy Winehouse caused "havoc" and "mayhem" on the set of Strictly Come Dancing according to this story, which seems greatly exaggerated. [The Sun]
• Hey look! Another story about how The Sun makes shit up. This time Lily Allen has accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages after the paper printed an article called "Ranting Lily." [The Star]
• Is Kanye West actually at an ashram in India? He still posts to his blog. Or someone does. [MSNBC Scoop, KanyeUniverseCity]
• File under Signs Of The Apocalypse: Heidi Montag wants to be "Octomom." [NY Daily News]
• Tyra did a promotional photo shoot in New York City for her talk show yesterday. [Gatecrasher]
• Whitney Port waited outside of a club for 30 minutes because the doorman hadn't seen The Hills or The City and wasn't impressed by her. [NY Post]
• That was quick: Paul Anka is now a 50% partner in the publishing rights to Michael Jackson's song "This Is It." [TMZ, TMZ, TMZ]
• Um. Michael Jackson's hair. Up for auction. [Guardian]
• Is Quinnipiac University worried about sending interns to the David Letterman show? [TMZ]
• Boo: Glee won't be part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, because the parade airs on NBC… and Glee is on Fox. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Matthew Perry will star, co-write and executive produce a new comedy about a self-involved manager of a second-rate sports arena who begins to re-evaluate his life on his 40th birthday. The show is being pitched to networks this week. [Reuters]
• Tilda Swinton is fighting against a planned £1 billion Donald Trump golf resort, which will evict four residents at the Menie estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. [Mirror]
• Rio de Janeiro hearts Woody Allen! The city is offering $2 million in subsidies to attract the director's as-yet-untitled next movie. [LA Times]
• I don't understand what is up between Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook, but they were having a custody dispute and now they have reached a settlement and are moving on. [ET]
• Right-handed Andy Roddick beat Virgin heir Sam Branson at tennis — playing as a leftie. [Page Six]
• Carly Simon is suing Starbucks for failing to properly promote a CD that she cut for the company last year. She wants between between $5 million and $10 million, which could buy a lotta lattes. [NYPost]
• Do you watch Southland? Of course you don't. Well, it's canceled now. [NY Post]
• "With the gay movement, it's personal. The same religious-right [bleep]holes who took away my civil rights and put me in jail for a year because they don't like what I do for a living have taken away gay rights. I know firsthand how it feels to have your civil rights stripped from you… P.S., lots of lesbians marched, too." — Joe "Girls Gone Wild" Francis, explaining why he joined the gay rights march in D.C. [Page Six]
• "After a week of considering to stop the release of the movie, I decided it fit the character in the film and it should stay in." — Sharon Stone on her leg-crossing scene in Basic Instinct. [NY Post]
• "If it had been my daughter who was barely a teenager - my daughter is 15 - Roman Polanski would be missing ... period. It wouldn't even get to the court case. But, that's me and I wouldn't want anyone else to follow that because you should let the justice system work it out." — Jamie Foxx, to Parade magazine. [MSNBC]
• "The family is fine with it. Who cares about the money? We have enough money. If I cared about the money, I'd be doing a reality show and doing interviews." — Randy Jackson on the distribution of Michael Jackson's estate. [TMZ]
• "I'm still wearing my own clothes, but I can't button my jeans anymore." — pregnant Padma Lakshmi. [WWD]
• "Was I in love? I couldn't really say. I was certainly intellectually curious and I felt emotionally connected. She was a primary school teacher and she was running away from her husband and had her child in tow. I saw her naked most days of the week, running around, putting the kettle on. In some shape or form I was going to get into that bed with her and lose my virginity. Which I did. Three, four, five weeks later she was pregnant." — Malcom McLaren on his years with Vivienne Westwood. [Times Of London]
• "I've made some OK movies. I don't think I've ever had a movie that was, like, a real Chris Rock movie. This is the closest I can get to it, I think. [My daughters] are very girly, so they're in their mother's [Malaak Compton-Rock] closet all the time putting on clothes and putting stuff in their hair, and they do their girlfriends' hair. You know, growing up with women around me and my daughters, it seemed like a rich topic." — Chris Rock on Good Hair. [WWD]
• "Probably the majority of young actors want to make a big impression in television or film straight away. I wish that young people now - and it's not very fashionable - learnt a bit about our fantastic heritage of theatre and the people who've gone before, learnt a bit about the history of the theatre, because it's phenomenal." — Dame Judi Dench. [Telegraph]
• "We didn't set out to make a children's movie, we set out to make a movie about childhood. In the same way that's what Maurice Sendak does: Maurice Sendak doesn't look at himself as a children's book author. He looks at himself as someone who's trying to write about childhood in an honest way. And with him as our producer, but really as our mentor, he guided us and inspired us to stay true to that." — Spike Jonze on Where The Wild Things Are. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
• "Most kids in movies are 'de-fanged.' They have no wildness. What we figured out pretty quickly was that we all clearly remembered what it was like to be a boy, to be a little wild and get into trouble." — Dave Eggers, screenwriter for Where The Wild Things Are. [Telegraph]
• "In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. And I did not want to reduce Max to the trite image of the good little boy that you find in too many books." — Maurice Sendak on Where The Wild Things Are. [AP]

I can't explain the makeup, the hair, or the cape, but I know that the text on that baby says "Get A Life!"

I'm pretty sure there's a global warming message lurking in this runner's ensemble, but I'm too busy checking out the shimmery wrap.

Something subtle, for work, when your inner Marie Antoinette is dying to get out.

The plaid/Makes me sad.

Any ideas what's going on here? The jacket looks like it's made of sumptuous silk. Team No Pants gets chilly sometimes.

Let them eat cake an apple!

I call this one "La Mariée De Cadavre." That's "The Corpse Bride" en Français.

I think I just found my New Year's Eve outfit!

The woman drinks her own Kool-Aid, at least.

[Images via Getty.]

Things start out innocently enough: This little plaid dress is actually wearable! Of course, she has a frog on her head.

A cute polka-dot dress is saved from being too safe with quirky bodice, pockets, fabric folds and interesting hem.

These ladies are from the country, but they're worldly, see?

Then there's this: Punky black with a voodoo doll or something hanging from her neck.

This is a jumper or a diaper or something. With a stuffed frog. The model is Pixie Geldof. I don't know what any of it means.

Once she lost her job as an extra for Newsies, she also lost her mind and started wearing her underwear on the outside.

Fingerpainting as a nostalgic nod to misspent youth? Or a pattern made by people crying out for help? You decide.

No bank teller is going to hand over the cash if you're wearing diapers. It's just not going to happen.

Perfect for work, if your job involves spanking businessmen with a paddle.

Remember Pound Puppies? They came from the "pound," and you saved them by adopting them. This is Pants Puppy, whose only home is a pocket in Daisy Lowe's pants.

Won't you please help?

Well, at least the 68-year-old mother of punk looks pleased!

[Images via Getty.]

• Erin Wasson is reviving her jewelry collection as a cheaper costume line. Let's hope in addition to ditching the $1000+ price point, Wasson also abandons her unfortunate habit of claiming jewelry designer Bliss Lau's pieces as her own. [Elle UK]

• Because she lurves Roger Federer, Anna Wintour and her longtime boyfriend, Shelby Bryan, went to see Federer's match at the U.S. Open. They left before Serena even took the court. [P6]
• Vivienne Westwood has chosen Pamela Anderson for her Gold Label campaign for the second season running. Westwood and husband Andreas Kronthaler also re-join Anderson in the whimsical set of images. [Daily Mail]
• Crazy enough to work: Threeasfour and Yoko Ono. Ono reportedly inspired the wacky design trio's spring collection, and also contributed her artwork for prints. [WWD]
• Rachel Zoe's QVC collection, which clocks in at a relatively modest $32.50-130 price range, is full of faux fur and snakeskin pieces. [Nitro:Licious]
• Tim Gunn on Project Runway guest judge Lindsay Lohan: "I was surprised and pleased by how extremely knowledgeable about fashion and articulate Lindsay Lohan was. She's very young and can be portrayed in ways that aren't all together flattering, and she was a true statesperson and really weighed in on the designers and what they were doing exceptionally well. And it was really a thrill to have her." [People]
• Although 19-year-old model Jourdan Dunn was included in the Women agency's Spring/Summer 2010 Show Package, which was thought to mean that the five months pregnant runway star would make the circuit of casting directors this season, Women has confirmed that Dunn will not be at fashion week. Guess we won't get to add Dunn to the list of models (Dunn's compatriots Karen Elson and Stella Tennant among them) who have also walked shows while pregnant. [The Cut]
• Yigal Azrouël, who has earned more press in recent months for his alleged role in the breakup of Billy Joel and Katie Lee's marriage than for his designs, is reportedly in the unique position of seeking less media attention. Although his show will still be attended by around 800 people, expect fewer celebrities, and no after-party. Also, nobody who ever slept with Eliot Spitzer is invited. [NYDN]
• Daphne Guinness, on what tuberose, the principal note in her new perfume, Daphne, reminds her of: "My mother and the flower market in Figueres in Spain and in Cadaqués, where I grew up. We always used to have these huge vats of them, and they would just fill the house with scent all summer long. It reminds me of my childhood. I would collect them and put them all on greaseproof paper with a kind of gel, and then you leave it for a few days. Then you'd scrape off the gel and have a sort of essence. It's quite an ancient plant. Don't quote me on this, but someone told me that pterodactyls used to eat them...it does make sense, because when they die they smell like rotting flesh, and that's why pterodactyls were attracted to them — actually maybe it was archaeopteryx. Tuberose, they're not beautiful in the peony sense of the word, but the smell is unlike anything else. I love it. And I love the scent of sort of all those woods that you get from the Middle East. I grew up in the seventies and everybody was running around burning Joss sticks and, you know, banging tambourines." [Style.com]
• Paper magazine is hosting a black-tie event at the New York Public Library — which is adjacent to Bryant Park — to kick off fashion week. Liza Minnelli and Queen Latifah, plus other "surprise" guests, will perform. [People]
• L'Oréal principal shareholder Liliane Bettencourt's legal fight with her daughter, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, has gone to court in France. Bettencourt, 86, has admitted turning over about $1 billion worth of her fortune to François-Marie Banier, a 62-year-old photographer who is her confidant. Bettencourt-Meyers accuses Banier of "exploitation of weakness," a criminal offense, while Bettencourt's side says that Bettencourt-Meyers is simply jealous and ungrateful. [ToL]
• Time's Style & Design issue will suspend publication after the current issue, which goes out today. Ad pages in the magazine had decreased precipitously. [WWD]
• Abakus jewelry designer Marsha Chun-Matsubara: "My parents say that when I was four, I wore a small, heavy bike chain around my neck. Later, when I really wanted my ears pierced I stuck Chiquita Banana stickers on my earlobes. When I was about seven, my mother was teaching me how to use an abacus. I was so frustrated that I threw it and all the beads scattered. From then on, I used the wooden beads to make necklaces. That's where I got the name for my line." [W]
• The sadly deceased DJ AM — a noted sneakerhead who owned more than 700 pairs of Nikes — was working on his own line for the shoe giant when he died last week. Although the final designs, Nike says, had Adam Goldstein's approval, whether and when they will ever be released now depends on the desires of the musician's family. [TMZ]
  
• Nancy Talbot, the woman behind the Talbot's retail chain, has died in Colorado. She was 89. [NYTimes]
• Donatella Versace tells Out magazine — the October cover of which she graces, with model Paul Sculfor — that "You can be too boring, but you can never be too seductive." Which is a point of view we were pretty much familiar with from looking at her clothes. [WWD]
• Vanessa Williams says Ugly Betty's wardrobe department is spending its money wisely — and sticking to sale items. "There was a Naeem Kahn dress that went for $3,000, and they watched it and watched and by the time we got it, it was like $800." [People]
• The premium denim market may have some life in it yet. At the apparel trade show in Las Vegas, pricey brands like True Religion and Citizens of Humanity reported strong wholesale sales, and the NPD Group says the premium denim market grew 5% in the 12 months ended in June. [Reuters]
• But during the month of August, across the whole apparel sector, same-store sales declined an average of 2.5%. Back-to-school sales and promotions did little to stoke the desire of unwilling consumers. [Crains]
• Quiksilver reported a 53% drop in third-quarter earnings on last year. [WSJ]
• Movado scraped through the quarter with a modest profit — $528,000 — after six months of losses. The result still represents a 93.5% fall in earnings on last year. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Abercrombie & Fitch continues to live up to its reputation as the Worst Recession Company Ever. (Thanks Time!) After announcing its latest disastrous monthly comps — August same-store sales fell 29% — Citi downgraded the stock to a Sell, and share prices fell 6%. [TS]
• Choosing the 50 Sluttiest American Apparel ads is like shooting fish in a barrel. [StyleCrave]

• Bucking the recession, Elle MacPherson's labradoodle, Bella, has been signed as the body of canine fashion line Dogside.com, for a "substantial five-figure sum." [Telegraph]
• Anna Wintour wears dress twice! The sky is falling! [Styleist]
• And she wants privacy. Sorry. [NYPost]

• Propr, the inexplicable fashion collaboration between Ben Harper and David Arquette, is opening a pop-up shop in New York."Color influences me," says Arquette. [WWD]
• Amber Valetta likes the Real America: "Oklahoma people are good people, they're friendly people. Sure, there's the coasts, but when you go to the middle, it's the real deal. You get a feeling of what's really going on in America. People are having a hard time.… but it is a place with beautiful light and crazy thunderstorms. My son loves it there and we try to give him similar experiences to what we had, playing in the creek with our cousins." [Telegraph]
• And back on the coasts (presumably) Valetta's in a fab Hedi Slimane-shot spread for V Magazine. [Fabsugar]
• Meanwhile, Jessica Simpson has landed the windows at Macy's. Quoth the polymath of the Miracle on 34th Street: "It's a total thrill for me. I feel privileged just to be in business with such an iconic store...And it is an honor to know that Macy's respects and believes in my brand so much that they chose to feature the Fall collection in the windows at one of their flagship stores! WOW…I feel blessed." [People]
• TopShop is getting into makeup. [WWD]
• In honor of London Fashion Week, Jenny Dyson, the publisher of Rubbish Magazine, is introducing "fashion week finger puppets," including Miuccia Prada, André Leon Talley, Vivienne Westwood, and, obviously, Karl Lagerfeld, presumably worn on one's middle finger. [NYT]
• Is it a sign of economic turnaround that Lee Jeans has opened its first store, ever? [WWD]
• We're guessing the fact that "fleece" and "underwear" are the biggest economic performers is a sign of just the opposite. [WWD]
• Perhaps inevitably, American Eagle, the small-man-on-campus' Abercrombie, is also down. [WSJ]
• And, uh oh: "The American waistline may be expanding, but plus-size shoppers are tightening their belts." You determine what the "uh oh" refers to. [MSNBC]
• Speaking of word games, we're still puzzling over what the hell this description of Tim Gunn means: "Anyone with such proper command of the English language should be a spendthrift, right?" Wait, what? [Houston Chronicle]
• And speaking of (encouraging) mysteries: Guess? is way up. [WWD]
• Alexander Wang's muses: "The shoes are named after models — Lara, Hanne, Racquel — but the bags are named after TV show characters. We have the Brenda and Kelly [90210], the Dorothy shopper [The Golden Girls] and the Trudy [Miami Vice]. They're all the shows that used to be on TV when I was growing up." [W]
• Despite its excited "we're getting things done!" music, this star-filled PSA for "Fashion's Night Out" just confuses us. [Style.com]
• Maybe because it's been a while since we heard Diddy rap? [<a href="http://www.style.com/stylefile/2009/08/and-now-an-important-message-from-sean-combs-and-co/">StyleFile]
• Speaking of TCB, innovative fashion site Polyvore.com is going gangbusters: recently they've hosted digital campaigns for Nike and Gap and boosted their capital. [AdAge]
• In an attempt to get residents to buckle up for safety, Dubai is asking designers to help them make seatbelts chic. We find logos help. [Racked]
• Also: Andre Leon Talley wears Uggs. "It's a cozy shoe. Also, they're only $98." [Time Out New York]

• Model Liskula Cohen has confronted the woman revealed as the author of a hate-blog directed against her. Cohen told the woman that she forgave her, but the blogger did not apologize — probably because a defamation suit is pending. [P6]

• Brett Favre is going to be the new face, and presumably butt, of Wrangler jeans. [WWD]
• Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone are reportedly eloping to Massachusetts this weekend. [P6]
• Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy Olsen on Mad Men, is sick of wearing mustard, says costume designer Janie Bryant. [W]
• Stella McCartney's perfume, Stellanude, will launch as planned, because Ali Hewson's court bid to prevent it has failed. Hewson runs a company called Nude Brands, and markets a line of skincare under the Nude trademark. [Telegraph]
• The headline — "David Bailey: Still Snapping Away At 71" — might as well just read "David Bailey, Amazingly, Still Alive." But the legendary British photographer actually has plenty to say on the topics of retouching and American Vogue: "D'you know any model over the age of 23 has to be touched up these days. Twenty-three? It's fucking ridiculous but that's what you have to do for American Vogue and it's getting to be the same over here." [ToL]
• Anna Wintour personally approves every photo published by Vogue's blog. [The Cut]
• Meanwhile, sources say that Vogue attracted early attention from the consultants McKinsey because they believe it is a model of a larger Condé Nast title, and that the lessons learned from studying Vogue will be applicable to other magazines. Vogue, representative? More likely it drew the money-savers' eyes first because of its legendary profligacy. [NYObs]
• Michelle Obama's principal hairstylist says, "I believe hair is a language, if it's not moving it has no voice." [W]
• Meanwhile, is there any reason Simon Doonan might be measuring the White House drapes? Or shall we just assume the Obamas have hired the wittiest interior designer ever? [VF]
• Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier says there will be no Jon Gosselin clothing line. And we were so hoping. [E!]
• Sex-era Vivienne Westwood punk clothing is so popular that people are counterfeiting it now, a generation later. Three people were arrested in London and charged with fraud for allegedly selling clothing they claimed had come from Malcolm McLaren and Westwood's infamous store. [WWD]
• If you want to be an It Girl, Refinery29 created a handy charticle for your edification. It helps if you have the Cobrasnake's number. [Refiner29]
• Mario Grauso, the president of Puig Fashion Group, which owns Carolina Herrera and Nina Ricci, among other houses, is rumored to be resigning. [WWD]
• This fashion blind item is kind of generic, but anyway: "Which designer won't be showing in the Tent this year, like he usually does? Rumor has it he'll send his gorgeous gowns down the Salon's runway instead." Could be almost anyone, in this economy. But perhaps it's Zac Posen? [Fashionista]
• Earlier this month, the Michael Kors boutique on Prince Street in SoHo was burgled. A man distracted the security guard at the neighboring Apple store and made off with $13,000 worth of merchandise. [Villager]
• Pop-up stores are barely news these days, but if Rodarte is doing one at Colette in Paris this October, and selling DVDs of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and stuffed knit animals, that actually sounds cool. [WWD]
• Two men have now been arrested in connection with the $66 million jewelry robbery at the Graff store in London. [NYTimes]
• The Humane Society wants the FTC to investigate Bergdorf's and Neiman Marcus for allegedly mislabeling fur products. The Society alleges that both stores sold Manolo Blahnik boots made from ocelot fur, an endangered species. [WWD]
• The Limited's second quarter profit declined by 27% on last year's numbers. [WSJ]
• L.L. Bean is shaking things up with a new creative director, Rogues Gallery's Alex Carleton. [NYTimes]
• The Buckle has continued its trend of positive results, despite the recession. The last quarter saw its profits rise 12% on the same period last year, to $25 million. [WSJ]

Tea, whose last contribution to The Believer was an excellent 2006 essay that offered a queer theory reading of the Annual Taxidermy Convention, Competition, And Trade Show, here offers up a light Paris diary. But in between the Karl Lagerfeld and the Kanye West and the Kate Moss (who actually, during one climactic moment, walks up to Tea and pushes her), there are some real insights.

For one, sexuality issues in fashion are given a hearing, not least because Tea, a lesbian, is accompanying fellow lesbians Ditto, and Tara Perkins — the "Annie Oakley" behind the Sex Workers' Art Show Tour — who manages the Gossip. The fact that the three women are described as having each grown up very poor also motivates Tea to write some eloquent statements about fashion's foundational exclusivity, and about what it means to be on one side of the velvet rope. After being waved past a group of "queer boys with great style and no connections" outside the Nina Ricci show, Ditto remarks, "I've got survivor's guilt. I've got punk guilt."

We all know there's plenty to hate about the insanity of the consumer-driven, needs-manufacturing, world of fashion. But Tea also offers a cogent apologia for liking overpriced clothes:

"For a long time I hated beauty for the way people used it as a measuring stick to beat people, especially women. But I came to believe in a vast idea of beauty, one that included me and all my beautiful weirdo friends As for more conventional beauty, I didn't have to hate it just because people let it make them stupid. My attitude moved from the conceptual to the concrete: Take a beautiful dress. Say it's a Rodarte dress, made by these sort of creepy, gothic sisters who live with their parents in Pasadena. Their dresses look like a storybook princess messed them up while wearing them on a jaunt through the space-time continuum. They are torn tulle and stiff corset and lots of lace and flowers and fluffy bullshit stuck all over the place. Parts make you wonder if these sisters, the Mulleavy sisters — see, even their names make you think of the dark family landscape of a Joyce Carol Oates novel — are employing some sort of spider-beast to do their weaving. The dresses cost upwards of ten thousand dollars at Barneys. At one time in my psychological development, this would have made me hate the dresses, hate the designers, hate those poseur Mulleavy sisters, hate anyone and everyone who could afford them, hate capitalism, hate the world, hate the universe and whatever string of incomprehensible events led to the big bang. Now I think — when I go into Barneys to visit these dresses (the way I have gone to the SPCA to visit with various animals I can't adopt), to just pet their glorious fabrics and marvel at the endless detailing and giggle at the whimsical appliqués — I think: It isn't the dress's fault that it's so expensive. I love it like a living thing, and visit it at this department store. I don't love a painting on a museum wall any less for not being able to own it."

Beth Ditto comes across extremely well in the story. She seems kind, and down-to-earth; she can't sleep alone, and sometimes even then she has to make up jokes to combat insomnia. ("What do D&D-playing goth couples fight about the most? The thermoLeStat! Get it?") She spends hours doing different hair and makeup looks for the women in her life — she says if she weren't in a rock band, she'd be in beauty school. She goes to breakfast at her fancy Paris hotel in her pajamas. And Ditto is light years away from the typical raised-in-privilege star: Tea describes how she grew up "in a part of Arkansas with no MTV, no telephones, no indoor plumbing, and no money."

Yet everyone is on the star swag gravy train; Ditto and Perkins went "shopping" in London prior to fashion week, retrieving articles of clothing from designers' showrooms for nada. Even the girlfriend of a Gossip member grabs a free fur from Fendi. As Ditto puts it, "If people think you're rich they give you things. If they think you're poor, they don't give you anything." The true import of this paradox — the idea that fashion relies on a vast underclass whose belief in the value of products they could never afford actually inflates those very products' prices high enough that the profits they make for the label can be invested in giving away shit to those who actually could afford to buy at the inflated value — is regrettably never fully explored. If fashion is, even in part, a giant system for the regressive redistribution of wealth, then surely Tea could have drilled down on these issues with a source as articulate and informed as Ditto.

Many of Tea's criticisms of the fashion industry, seen through the particular seven-day-circus of fashion week, are similarly implicit. When discussing Ditto's magazine appearances, Tea notes that "magazines are always wanting to dress Beth burlesque, in feathers and corsets and other looks that died out around the turn of the present century, or else they want her to be naked. Beth's onstage stripping has more in common with Iggy Pop's frolicking in broken glass than a burlesque act." The fact that the nudity and burlesque concepts ends up reinforcing one of the tritest and most tired stereotypes about larger women — that they must be lusciously sexually available — must be an annoyance to Ditto, who puts down stereotypes like it's her job, but her reaction is not stated in Tea's piece, beyond the implication that Ditto finds burlesque shoots boring. And although Tea attributes this failure of magazines' imagination in part to "stylists unused to dressing fat girls," she fails to note the number one structural constraint of the industry that influences how Ditto might be styled: magazines shoot fashion samples. Fashion samples are made in tiny sizes. Any celebrity who can't fit into the ridiculously sized clothes is likely to be asked to pose naked. The industry that Ditto loves, and which claims extravagantly to love Ditto back (an LED screen at a party reads "FENDI <3 BETH"), cannot bring itself to make clothing she can wear, except by special arrangement.

Tea evidently likes Ditto; indeed, from the way she comes across in this essay — feminist, self-possessed, genuine — it would be impossible not to like her. But it seems like Tea's affection for her source kept her from asking, at crucial junctures, some hard questions. This shyness, this willingness to go right up to the edge of any of the contradictions that strikes through the heart of the fashion industry, but no further, is the only thing that keeps this piece from being truly excellent. All the sleepovers and makeovers and fashion parties make one yearn for something just a little bit deeper. To a certain extent, this problem of perspective ends up mirroring the frothiness of fashion itself. As Cathy Horyn once wrote, although there are many lively and informative angles from which to interrogate the fashion industry, from inside that world, perspective can be limited: "Fashion ain't deep. It looks into a mirror and sees...itself."

But although Tea's essay is at times perhaps a little too inclined to take the industry at face value, she understands and articulates a lot that most professional fashion writers never seem to get across. Perhaps it takes a genuine grown-up high school misfit to notice that most, if not all, fashion people are not the "cool" kids aged 10 years: "Though many would think of the term fashion people and conjure rail-thin, snotty, sickeningly wealthy women and their male counterparts, in reality, a lot of fashion people are ex-nerds, small-town gays who dressed eccentrically and got made fun of for being flamboyant and fruity." It really is a world populated by people who were always made to feel different. (Of course, having been at one time intimately acquainted with one's own disempowerment isn't necessarily a prophylactic against replicating that power structure later, in a new context, with oneself in a more secure place, and perhaps that is where the industry's "snottiness" comes from.)

At the end of the week, after Tea and Perkins sneak goodie bags and bump into Nan Goldin, and after Ditto talks with Vivienne Westwood about Leonard Peltier, the Gossip plays a Fendi after-party at the VIP Club wearing a specially-made sequin-and-fur ensemble she can take off, piece by piece — "a wonderful Russian nesting doll of an outfit," as Tea puts it. Ditto takes the stage, and announces, "I'm very, very rich!" before throwing her fur headpiece into the audience, and the band starts to play. The writer reflects:

"Even though I have been here all week, knowing that every moment was leading to this, watching Beth accosted by photographers and flattered by designers, I still cannot get over how this little band that I have known for so long, this indie queer feminist punk band, is the absolute star of the Fendi show. The reality is staggering. In many ways it shouldn't be a surprise — less-talented, less-interesting, less-charismatic artists get famous all the time. They just tend not to be so outspokenly queer, so flamboyantly fat, so poor in their roots, so disconnected from the music industry, with no secret dad producer or mom publicist. The Gossip got to this lit-up stage in Paris through the force of their own dogged dedication to their DIY garage-rock band. It makes my eyes fill with fucking tears."

If fashion — or music, for that matter — needed defending, that call-to-arms is plenty good enough for me.

All cell phone photos by Michelle Tea, courtesy of the Believer

Full disclosure: In 2006, I was a summer intern for The Believer and McSweeney's. I did a lot of fact-checking and tried to interest them in an essay about hoboes.

The Gossip Takes Paris [The Believer]
Charming Deformities [The Believer]
Conspicuous By Their Presence [NYTimes]

• Christian Siriano is collaborating secretly with Starbucks. He won't say on what, but isn't speculation fun? Maybe he's changing the uniform to something fierce, with ruffles. [The Cut]

• Christian Lacroix might have found a buyer. The firm Bernard Krief Consultants has announced its intention to bid for the bankrupt French fashion house. Krief has apparently been treating the recession as a chance to buy up properties on the cheap: it recently bid for the distressed French fast fashion chain Morgan, and successfully took over the textiles company DMC. No dollar value for Krief's proposed bid was mentioned, and Christian Lacroix had no comment. [WWD]
• Marc Jacobs' menswear division publicist Tim Mark Garcia is wearing an ankle bracelet and facing extradition to the Philippines on charges of "plunder." Garcia's father, former major general Carlos F. Garcia, allegedly stole $6.2 million from the Filipino people, and then used it to buy New York real estate — like the publicist's Trump Park Avenue condo — in his children's names. [P6]
• Three of the six nominees for this year's Swiss Textile Awards are Americans: Alexander Wang, Thakoon Panichgul, and Ohne Titel. Also in the running are Erdem, Alexis Mabille, and Peter Pilotto. Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, who won last year, were the first U.S. designers to ever nab the prestigious award. [FWD]
• The Guardian compiled some of Vivienne Westwood's wisest words from over the years, including, "Fashion is about eventually becoming naked." Makes for an interesting read. [Guardian]
• Photos of Betsey Johnson's reissued vintage collection for boutique Opening Ceremony show it to be dark and punky and '80s, not pink and frilly and '80s. Johnson says, "There was always this harder side to me but it was hard to see it through the prints and ruffles." [Racked]
• Charlotte Gainsbourg says she wasn't much of a perfume wearer, you know, before she became the face of Balenciaga's new scent. [Style.com]
• Erin Wasson will be showing her Rvca collection at New York Fashion Week in September. [UK Elle]
• Kat Von D has created a line of tattoo concealers for her Sephora line, because she's realized that some people don't want all their tattoos to be visible all of the time. (Maybe a conservative cousin's wedding isn't the best time to show off your ink Barbarella.) She says the concealer is waterproof and won't smudge or transfer to clothing, and it is kind of strange seeing her entire torso without any tattoos for the ad shoot. [People]
• British tabloid the Sun is reporting that model Daisy Lowe fell into a month-long depression after surgery to remove a pre-cancerous growth from her cervix in May. [The Sun]
• Lowe's first campaign for Anna Sui just leaked to the Internet. [Sassybella]
• Chris Benz, Alex Wang, Maria Pinto, and Jason Wu are all newly minted members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Oh, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of The Row got in, too. [WWD]
• Model Sigrid Agren — face of the Stella McCartney campaign we posted yesterday — has summer plans that include fishing in a lake and looking for berries with her brother, Quentin, in Sweden. [W]
• Wow, Avril Lavigne really hasn't changed her makeup since 2002. (This story is about her kids' line, which includes, wait for it...hoodies.) [Budget Fashionista]
• Hermès' sales grew by 12% in the second quarter. As had been previously reported, the super-expensive leather goods division led the increase. Its sales were up by 33.4%. [WWD]

• "I'm not a designer," says Emma Watson. "If someone asked me to do something that was beneficial to a cause, then maybe I'd consider it, but not just ‘Look at me! I've got my own line!'" And as for perfume:

• "[It's] gotten so ridiculous," continues the actress. "The idea of making my own perfume makes me want to vomit." There's a joke about Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans in here somewhere. [WWD]
• The Cut did this awesome thing where they analyzed couture week by the numbers. Ever wondered how many feathers Jean Paul Gaultier uses in his couture collection? (Approximately 10,000.) Or the length of the train on Lara Stone's Chanel couture wedding dress? (200 meters.) Or the number of false eyelashes used for the Maison Martin Margiela eyelash vest? (275.) Well, now you can know all that — and much more. [The Cut]
• Madonna's back-up dancers wear Brooks Brothers. Who knew? [WWD]
• Simon Cowell and Sir Philip Green are forming an entertainment company together that'll span music, television, and fashion and other merchandising — and rumor has it they've signed Kate Moss to be a figurehead for the fashion division, and to act as a talent scout for new musical artists. [Daily Mail]
• Karolina Kurkova and her documentarian ex-Marine boyfriend are expecting their first child together. Blahopřejeme! [P6]
• Anthropologie is collaborating with the estate of print designer Vera Neumann, who started her business just after WWII by using surplus parachute silk for fabric and whose stated goal was to make one new print design every day of her life (she died with some 7,000 to her name). In addition to reproducing plates, bedding, and other homewares with Neumann's distinctive designs, Anthropologie is doing a book about Neumann, out next March. [W]
• Now this is just weird. For her Fall '09 campaign, Donna Karan decided to use runway photographs — all fine and good. But her creative team obviously Photoshopped the head of her chosen campaign model, Toni Garrn, onto the bodies of Sasha Pivovarova and Anya Kazakova. Anya and Sasha were in the show, had their pictures taken on the runway, and as Fashionologie's side-by-side shots prove, they now have both been digitally replaced from the neck up by Toni Garrn. (From the looks of things, Karlie Kloss was also Photoshopped into the background of the campaign images.) If Karan hasn't paid Kazakova, Pivovarova and Kloss for being featured in the campaign, their agencies have an awfully good case to make. [Fashionologie]
• Vivienne Westwood: "Take the tablecloth if it's beautiful and even take a towel if it's good enough, or the curtains or anything, and put things together yourself. Take things from your husband or your boyfriend, like boxer shorts or whatever — and you can take a beautiful thing as well and put it with a bit of rubbish. Don't spend money, just take what you can find. Take your old things, keep on wearing them. Don't buy much fashion anymore, but if you do buy it, choose really well, wear it for a long time, till it sort of drops off your back, it'll get even more wonderful, maybe. Even if it's horrible, if you wear it for ages it'll probably look better. Forget all this business with the washing machine and buying all these clothes. Choose well, if it's dirty, don't bother. Dirt is patina. It's patina." "Dirt is patina" is totally our new catchphrase. [WoW]
• Christian Audigier has denied that he is working on a line of kids' clothing with Jon Gosselin. [UPI]
• Of course there would be a product tie-in. Kooba is producing bags named after the female characters in NYC Prep. They're brightly colored and have gold-toned hardware, which is to say that they look like Kooba bags — and they cost $595. [Luxist]
• Balmain is said to be starting a handbag business. Buyers in Paris are being shown pre-collection samples in a half-dozen styles. We imagine anything in studded, black fringed leather, done in Christophe Decarnin's hot-right-now style, would sell like the proverbial hot cakes. [WWD]
• Oh, Jesus. What is this? Lara Stone is not a U.S. Size 6. (And by no method of conversion is a U.K. Size 8 a U.S. Size 6!) Pull the other one. Have you ever seen Lara Stone? Don't be distracted by her (awesome) boobies: she has a small frame and strikingly narrow hips. Certain fashion writers may long for that brief early 90s interregnum when certain models could be a Size 6, but the way to get back there is not to seize upon a buxom Size 2 girl and insert her into your Procrustean narrative. [The Cut]
• If you speak Italian, maybe you might want to watch this Italian television segment about Terry Richardson's Pirelli Calendar shoot in Bahia, Brazil. Given the nature of the Pirelli Calendar, it is NSFW. [BlackBook]
• Come this September, for $39, you will be able to buy a "limited edition" biscuit tin, printed with an Erin Fetherston fashion sketch and filled with six packets of LU cookies. This was totally one of those partnerships finalized before the recession. [WWD]
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over 800 items of counterfeit Izod, Old Navy, and Gap denim items at a port in Charleston, South Carolina. The haul had an estimated value of over $727,000. [WWD]
• After having to expensively back out of a Fifth Avenue lease for a planned flagship store, and after announcing the need to refinance some $170 million in debt this spring, Marc Ecko is putting his company's 275,000 sq. ft. 23rd St. headquarters on the market. If anyone needs an office with a half basketball court, now's your time — the price is "negotiable." [Crain's via CityFile, which has pictures]
• Gene McCarthy is leaving his position as co-president of Timberland, effective the end of this week. The company would not explain the departure. [WWD]

• 42-year-old Kristen McMenamy, whose deeply unconventional beauty shone in many of the most memorable fashion photographs of the early '90s, was chosen by Steven Meisel for the new cover of Italian Vogue. [FWD]

• Yves Saint Laurent's Stefano Pilati, whose recent ads have starred Naomi Campbell, continues his run with the '90s supes in his Fall 2009 campaign. Christy Turlington, wearing pleated pants that do no women any favors, poses against a white background, inside a black picture frame that floats in space. [Telegraph]
• Speaking of Naomi Campbell, she'll be the face of Dennis Basso this fall. Basso is a well-known fur designer, and Campbell once famously declared that she'd rather go naked than wear fur, but obviously her naked avarice got in the way. [WWD]
• Madonna wore jet-beaded Givenchy couture on stage in London. Says designer Riccardo Tisci, "She's wearing an outfit that will make history." [People]
• The couture shows get underway in Paris today, and in this economy, selling $70,000 dresses seems like a difficult task. But at Christian Lacroix, whose house recently declared bankruptcy, there is an order backlog for more than 20 outfits. [WWD]
• That still might not save Lacroix. Employees were told Friday of a restructuring plan that would cut the 124-strong workforce to 12, and reduce the Lacroix label to a licensing operation. The only hope is for a buyer to step in. [WWD]
• Prodigious design talent — and rumored Madonna collaborator — Christian Audigier has some sharp words for Victoria Beckham and her celebrity dress line. "I like her, she is a nice girl, but she is not completely my style. I have seen some of her designs — they are very simple. It's difficult for an artist or a singer to enter into the world of fashion," quoth the popularizer of such classics as the trucker hat and the tattoo t-shirt. "You can't just rely on your name to help you sell. The way to sell and who to sell to and what you want to accomplish, these are all things you will need help with if you're entering into the world." [HindustanTimes]
• "I can't analyse my appeal. If I did I'd be in a straitjacket," reports supermodel Daria Werbowy. "I am very lucid in relation to the reality of this industry, the ephemeral nature of beauty and fame,' she says, 'and that gives me a certain distance and quite a bit of humour." [Telegraph]
• Stylist Patricia Field took the opportunity of an interview with the Mirror to settle an old disagreement with Kristin Davis. And with A-line skirts, which we always have found extremely flattering. "I hate the A-line skirt. It's like a lampshade. Ugly. Kristin Davis always wanted to wear A-line skirts as she thought it hid her big behind. She has a fabulous figure – she is completely hour glass, and I would say: ‘Kristin, you have a small waist – show off your round ass!' She would never show it. I wanted to make her into a Bettie Page in Sex And The City, but all she wanted were A-line skirts and Ralph Lauren clothes." [Mirror]
• Meanwhile, Roberto Cavalli has deep thoughts on our economy. "I never pay attention to costs — it's not attractive to speak about numbers. Why can't we just focus on the beauty of an object? I don't know anything about the financial crisis." [ToL]
• Times of London writer Shane Watson asks whether Abercrombie & Fitch's decision to tell an employee with a prosthetic arm to stay in the stockroom was really all that surprising, given the chain's refusal to hire anyone who isn't "regulation cute." Because discriminating against disabled people is exactly the same as dictating your employees hair length and nail polish colors! [ToL]
• Seeing the Wall Street Journal's perspectival dry-point etching of a man wearing skinny jeans totally makes up for this pedestrian story about how the trend caught on. [WSJ]
• Foot wear maestro Manolo Blahnik: "Are shoes so important? Really? If I was a woman, I would be dressed in the same thing for a month and just change my hat and gloves. Maybe my shoes too; yes, I see what you mean but, really, it's jewels that change an outfit. And I do love gloves. And I adddore hats. There are toooo many shoes now. I always tell the children, 'Don't do shoes! Do hats!' And the shoes are so strange, so vulgar. I hate these platforms that are all over the place today; they are all about grabbing attention. They are suburban! I never do a platform. Well, I did, in the 1970s, but that was a bad experience." [FT]
• Ben Westwood, Vivienne Westwood's fetish photographer son, whose latest exhibit featured bound models with the heads of celebrities' children inexpertly Photoshopped onto their bodies, is launching a men's wear line. London Fashion Week must be holding its breath. [Harper's Bazaar]
• Children's apparel is more resilient than other sectors of the clothing market during economic downturns. Why? Kids grow. [WWD]
• The Guardian reviewed R.J. Cutler's The September Issue, and called it "utterly riveting." The paper also said, of the relationship between stylist Grace Coddington and editor Anna Wintour, "to watch them do battle over whether or not to shoot a rubber dress is to see the great fashion battle of creativity versus commerciality acted out in an urbane New York office: a Punch and Judy show scripted by Woody Allen." [Guardian]
• If this is news to anyone here: online ads in the form of fake quizzes, à la Coach's new "Are you a Poppy girl?", are rigged. We are all Poppy girls, in the eyes of Reed Krakoff. Buy a $198 tote bag now! [TBM]
• Apparently, while New York has been drowning in a consistent downpour since mid-April, London has been having a heat wave. Unsurprisingly, sales of bikinis — and beer — have spiked. [FT]
• Because he is paid primarily in stock and options, Ralph Lauren's compensation slipped by more than 40% in value this year. He still made $20.3 million. [WWD]
• Despite cashflow concerns, Prada is still opening stores at a fast clip. Two new boutiques will open this month in Paris and Prague, and the company plans to keep up its 2008 pace, which saw 34 new stores open, for the next three years. [WWD]
• For those nights when you can't seem to remember your underwear, behold: the anti-paparazzi handbag! Activated by camera flashes, the bag emits a beam of light (clue: it's like a slave flash) powerful enough to ruin anyone's shot. [BoingBoing]

• No plain yearbook headshot for this year's CFDA nominees: Jason Wu, Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang, et al posed for Craig McDean while wearing their own creations. [WWD]
• Leggings impresario Lindsay Lohan is rumored to be seeking a position as Ungaro's "creative consultant." Designer Esteban Cortazar is allegedly spitting pins. [P6]

• Marc Jacobs, his intended, Lorenzo Martone, and Donna Karan all agree: Nacho Figueras, the Argentine polo champ, is totally hotter than Prince Harry. "Nacho's the sexiest man on earth. Hello," averred Martone. I suggest you look at this picture, and make up your own mind. [The Cut]
• Nicole Farhi, somewhat unsurprisingly, thought she was going to die during a knifepoint robbery outside her home when her two assailants strangled her until she lost consciousness. The trial of the brothers accused of carrying out this and 16 other robberies around London is ongoing. Farhi lost a ring and a Rolex that belonged to her father in the attack. [Telegraph]
• Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller have made a $10 million commitment to the High Line project, which is transforming a former elevated railway line into a landscaped mini-park. [NY Times]
• For its couture show this July, Dior is returning to its first-ever store and the site where Christian Dior launched the famous "New Look" collection in 1947. [British Vogue]
• Thakoon Panichgul has launched his slightly lower-priced line, Thakoon Addition. And by slightly, we mean dresses starting around $600. Sigh. [FWD]
• Meanwhile, Gucci has opened its Shanghai flagship store. [WWD]
• How have I only just discovered Erin O'Connor's blog? The British supermodel reports that on her last trip to New York, she overheard a woman ordering a plastic surgeon to give her lips like Erin's, on the grounds that they are "kinda thin enough to look real." Erin and old friend Karen Elson decided to re-start their netball team, and Maggie Rizer apparently has held on to pictures of the three of them in agency housing at the very start of their careers. Her trip through the Met's "Model as Muse" exhibit made her observe: "'Muse,' I thought out loud, is so passé. Surely models no longer exist to amuse as muses? The models I know are collaborators, brand makers and ball breakers!" [British Vogue]
• Izod home furnishings will soon be a thing which you can buy. For what reason, I don't know. [WWD]
• In a diversification that makes slightly more sense, Puma is getting into swimwear. [WWD]
• Ben Westwood is, at 49, slightly too old for the "enfant terrible" label his gallery would give him. (Is it fair to say that after a certain point, you're just plain terrible?) Vivienne Westwood's eldest son thought long and hard about being the child of a celebrity, and decided the best way to represent this unique set of problematic circumstances through art would be to hire fetish models to pose tied up in ropes with the names of famous parents — Bob Geldof, Paula Yates, Keith Allen — and then clumsily Photoshop images of the real progeny's faces over the models' heads. You see, the kids are literally tied up by their heritage. Groan. His show opened in London last week. [Flavour]
• Uniqlo's May same-store sales grew by a whopping 18.3%, proving that in a troubled economy, everyone likes a little cheap cashmere. [WWD]
• And the Japanese retailer is rumored to be interested in taking over Brooks Brothers' old store location at 666 Fifth Avenue. Brooks Brothers consolidated two Midtown stores, and initially Abercrombie & Fitch was to move into the Fifth Avenue space — but when neighboring Hickey Freeman closed because of parent company Hartmarx's bankruptcy, Abercrombie moved there instead. Uniqlo, Topshop, Zara, Forever21 and Century 21 are among those said to be interested in the prime location. Because even now, Fifth Avenue still means sales volume. [NY Post]
• In bankruptcy court, Hartmarx and Emerisque, the private equity firm that wants to buy the bankrupt men's clothier, renegotiated the proposed takeover bid to give more cash to chief creditor Wells Fargo. If the new plan is approved by the judge today, Hartmarx and its factory could remain in operation. [NY Times]

• File under matches made in heaven: Karl Lagerfeld has designed couture costumes for England's National Ballet. [Telegraph]

• Did Eva Herzigova drink a lot of champagne at the opening of the Michael Kors store in London, and then walk out the door with a bracelet, watch, and sunglasses? Security guards reportedly looked like they were going to stop the supermodel, until the paparazzi started taking her picture. Kors claimed the next day that Herzigova was "being cheeky" — but that the items were a gift. [Daily Mail]
• Get ready to see a lot more of Jessica Biel: The actress has been named the newest face of Revlon. [WWD]
• Filene's Basement has filed for bankruptcy protection. Apparently, now that other stores have been forced to cut their prices, Filene's discounts are less impressive in the retail lineup. [Reuters]
• The Olivier Theyskens/Halston rumors are back. With the added complicator of Anna Wintour's involvement. [WWD]
• Holding the annual costume institute gala at the Met might distract from the Renoirs, sniffs writer Michael Gross. [NY Post]
• Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, and Linda Evangelista will all skip the event. Turlington is out of the country, filming a (doubtless very important) "documentary on maternal health." Steven Meisel will also sit the party out — but that's no surprise since the man is rarely glimpsed in public. [P6]
• Patti Smith doesn't require fashion. "I can wear rags," says the musician. "But they have to be cool rags." [The Cut]
• Mischa Barton, however, pretty much requires headbands. Or at least requires you to buy hers, since she doesn't have a career anymore, other than waiting to see if her pilot is getting picked up. [People]
• England apparently has has a Dress of the Year award since 1963. And this year it went to Kate Moss, for one of her Topshop designs. [Independent]
• Meanwhile Topshop, ever the good neighbor, has apparently knocked off Alexander Wang's "naked" dress — the one with the floating embroidery on mesh. [Racked]
• Wang's jacket for the Gap looks like a a biker jacket that swallowed a trench coat. [Racked]
• Is Azzedine Alaïa looking to launch a lingerie line? If so, why wont the famously body-conscious women's wear designer design it himself? [Elle]
• Speaking of lingerie, you should read this entertaining profile of Joe Corré, son of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, and co-founder of Agent Provocateur. "I don't buy into all this brand-identity bollocks — the Gucci lifestyle, the Prada lifestyle," says Corré. "What does that mean? That you're a rich, bored idiot with no soul? It's just emperor's new clothes bullshit. We're against all that. Agent Provocateur is about an attitude, about empowerment." [Guardian]
• Hogan's fall campaign will reportedly star Nate Lowman, an artist who dates Mary-Kate Olsen. [Fashionista]
• Bar Refaeli, the Israeli supermodel, has designed "the perfect little black bikini." It looks exactly like every other string bikini you've ever seen, but it costs $120. [People]
• Ben Sherman is quitting the footwear business by the end of this year. [WWD]
• On the other foot: Skechers, which is now back in the black. [WWD]
• Lily Cole, the British model, has not one but three movies coming out. And a new Rimmel ad. And, oh yeah, she's a full-time student at Cabridge. [The Cut]
• Thom Browne, whose business was rumored to be in dire straits recently, had his CEO and CFO depart on Friday. [WWD]