• The UK supermarket chain Asda has knocked off the Fall '09 Balmain dress that Kate Moss wore out dancing — and burst the seams of — two months ago. Asda's version costs just £16. [Telegraph]

• Frederic Bourke, the co-founder of Dooney & Bourke, has been found guilty of conspiracy and faces up to 10 years in prison. Bourke, 63, was part of a group of investors who spent hundreds of millions bribing officials in Azerbaijan during the late 1990s, in order to ensure its bid for the state oil company would be accepted when the asset was privatized. Bourke even arranged for medical treatment in New York City for two corrupt officials from the former Soviet republic. The investment group was run by Viktor Kozeny, a Czech financier who earned the nickname "the Pirate of Prague" for his aggressive, and sometimes illegal, tactics in buying up formerly state-owned assets across the former Soviet Bloc. Kozeny and Bourke were, naturally, neighbors in Aspen. The handbag company executive was acquitted on money-laundering charges but in addition to jail time, he still risks up to $500,000 in fines for the conspiracy conviction. [WWD]
• Convicted rapist designer Anand Jon has fired his attorney and is seeking to represent himself through his appeals process. This should end well. [HindustaniTimes]
• Anna Sui's Target line was set to be featured Gossip Girl, according to sources from the production, but executives at the retailer changed their minds because of the debauched nature of the show. Extras were going to be wearing Sui's Target collection in a scene to be filmed at Sui's store, and there were even going to be Target logos in the background — but no more, since all the characters do drugs and get drunk and Serena killed that dude. [NYDN]
• British Vogue has pictures of all the sumptuous costumes from Coco Avant Chanel. [British Vogue]
• Matt Tyrnauer, the documentarian who spent years making Valentino: The Last Emperor, says the designer was "Difficult." Imagine that. [NYP]
• Elie Tahari and his wife, Rory, were profiled by Town & Country magazine, and said a lot of tone-deaf things about their 9,000 sq. ft. SoHo triplex penthouse. "SoHo is like our Hamptons away from the Hamptons," says Rory. Have a nice recession, reader! Hope you still have a job. [The Awl]
• Not only does everything give you cancer, according to a television doctor, everyone will get cancer. "Cancer has affected my family and me," says a cheerful Patrick Dempsey. "It's going to affect everybody. Its [sic] just a matter of time." Dempsey's new Nike campaign meanwhile features "an innovative technology piece with the Chalkbot, a mobile unit that will receive messages from consumers (via e-mail and text) and transcribe them in yellow chalk along the roads of the Tour de France." We can imagine so many ways that could go wrong, all of them entertaining. [LATimes]
• Richard Tyler's iconic red dress uniform for Delta only goes up to a size 18. [BlackBook]
• The reason Ali Wise, Dolce & Gabbana's New York publicist, hacked into designer Nina Freudenberger's voicemail? A boy. Freudenberger says she dated Downtown Records founder Josh Deutsch two years after Wise did — and five other Deutsch ladyfriends claim the publicist subjected them to harassment and hacking, too. One was so freaked she contacted a private investigator. Wise spent the night in jail after being arrested on felony hacking charges. [Daily Intel]
• Mary Kay is suing Yahoo! for providing keyword-generated ads with links to its products via Yahoo! Mail. Mary Kay only sells directly to consumers, and feels its brand image and trademarks are negatively impacted by unauthorized online sales. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Maybelline might become the official cosmetics sponsor of New York Fashion Week. [WWD]
• Project Runway's Leanne Marshall talked to Blogging Project Runway about her line for Bluefly (now on sale) and her future plans as a designer. Marshall didn't mention the blog post she wrote last month about her frustrations working with Bluefly, but she did talk about this one time she tried to make shoes with a pair of old flip-flops and a hot glue gun. [BPR]
• Jason Wu's doll business is going gangbusters. The slight designer used to moonlight as a drafter for doll companies, and now that he's made it big, he gets to produce limited-edition dolls in tiny versions of his signature line. In addition to producing dolls for Colette in Paris (215 Euros) and Jeffrey NY (price unavailable), he's also doing a version for Japan that'll cost a cool grand. [Stylefile]
• For 215 Euros, if you were perchance Christian Lacroix, you could have paid the top models Vlada Roslyakova, Hanne Gaby Odiele, Daria Strokous, and Siri Tollerød to walk in your couture show, and still had enough left over to buy lunch. [Imaginary Socialite]
• Jon Gosselin hasn't been wearing all those Ed Hardy shirts out of the goodness of his heart, or the keenness of his fashion sense. [TMZ]
  li>For some reason, the Telegraph decided to run an Anya Hindmarch press release in its style section. The accessories MBE's latest "invention"? The "hands-free handbag," a small handbag with a long, resizable, removable strap. It can be worn across the body "so it becomes part of you, instead of being a nuisance," or, get this, it can be carried inside a larger bag like a pocketbook! Innovative. [Telegraph]
• Giorgio Armani's home division is doing the interiors for a 62-apartment historic redevelopment project in Rome. [Reuters]
• Sounds like Escada's refinancing plan isn't going so well: The German luxury goods company only has enough liquidity to last through August, and it may cease trading. [AFP]
• The September issues of the ladymags are all closing this week, and indications are that they'll be about one third lighter than last year. Cash-strapped retailers and luxury brands have sharply cut their ad spending so far this year, and the September issues, normally the fashion magazine industry's fattest cash cows, will be no exception. [WWD]
• Mickey Drexler, the man who made The Gap what it was in the 90s and J. Crew what it is today, sometimes pedals around the office on his bike. [CBS]
• Or perhaps the credit for the classic brand's rejuvenation should be shared with creative director Jenna Lyons. [LATimes]
• Punky Brewster has a kids clothing line. [People]

• Meanwhile, why are pandas so beloved (don't ask Jessica!) and are they China's "most powerful secret weapon?" Ominous-sounding. • Rumormill: sources say that Alec Baldwin attempted to have a battle of wits with his 30 Rock co-star Tina Fey. We will say it is a lie because even Alec isn't that dumb to mess with the sharp-tongued Fey. • Want to get a "sexy bustline?" Use Easy Curves, a weird stick that will instantly perk up your pair! • A person on Yahoo Answers asks "what is a meat curtain?" and a delightful sleuth named "Bill Cosby" informs us that it means "a womens [sic] vulva and the things don't match means a persons [sic] hair is dyed because their pubes are a different colour." Mystery solved! • Apparently Obama's win means black people have "no more excuses" about the system being designed to prevent black progress? This was written by the woman who started the Marry Your Baby Daddy Day.• Rumor has it that the now-folded Playgirl Magazine has yet to pay off any of their outstanding invoices from their last issue.• Despite the fact that the New York Times reports that cosmetic surgery is declining, the Wall Street Journal reports that Botox is doing great during the recession. • True romance: an overweight Indiana couple got weight-loss surgery on the same day last week.• Shocking: binge drinking makes you less of a sex stallion between the sheets.• Not since JFK, Jr. has there been a male child in the White House, is it because girls make vigorous campaigning easier for their political parents?•

MEGAN: Good morning! Did you hear? Apparently Spain's President Zapatero is nearly as bad as Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. And Spain's apparently in Latin America.

JASON: I heard about that. Very maverick. But you must indulge me a brief veer off topic.

MEGAN: Okay, but first Russia and now Spain? Whatever happened to attacking Grenada?

JASON: Kenley? From Project Runway? You are just the FUCKING WORST EVER IN LIFE. You are an awful, undermining, leprous, personality-crippled knee biter whose every utterance causes me pain - like white hot needles. OH DEAR GOD BUT YOU ARE AWFUL KENLEY. AWFUL! I see that in the next episode, Tim Gunn tells you to lose the "sarcasm and the facetiousness," but what's left, Kenley? What's left? A thin puddle of oozing, malodorous pus with a tweaker's take on the 1950s? I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU LIKE I HATE FELINE LEUKEMIA.

Okay. So, now. Something about Spain?

MEGAN: Dodai's post on Project Runway will be up soon!!
Anyway, apparently, we're contemplating war with Spain, too. I guess once we're done bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bombing Iran.

JASON: Well, okay. Spain. Yes. McCain, he is Los Rebelde Original! Now he either HATES Spain or thinks they are part of Latin America or hears "Jose Zapatero" and thinks "Zapatista" or something. It's terrible. I don't hate Spain. I've never been there, but it's not because I hate Spain. As soon as the Spanish master crushed ice, I am going. Provided we are not BOMB BOMB BOMB LA BAMBAING them.

MEGAN: They put ice in sangria, just not Coke. It was a nice country. But, Iran, well, that's another story.

JASON: Well, that's a relief. Isn't Sangria banned in DC?

MEGAN: No! I have a friend who actually dug into this! In Virginia, the liquor distributors got a law passed that restaurants couldn't make sangria in advance (i.e., sell it by the glass) if it contained liquor and wine, and once it went into effect everyone pitched a fit so it's either been repealed or is about to be. Yes, I have friends enough into sangria that we looked up the legislative history when Jaleo was all "we can't sell it by the glass anymore."

Sarah Palin believes that Hillary Clinton should put aside partisanship and appear on stage with her for the sake of eventually bombing Iran and not the optics of the two of them on stage together.

JASON: Oh, well, Sarah Palin is going to reap the goddamned whirlwind if she keeps that shit up. She wants to wake up in bed with some animal that's been field-dressed by Harold Ickes? I sure would not. Speaking of, I love how they're making a big deal about Palin "going to the U.N." when she's apparently going to just be yelling at Ahmadinejad from the safety of Rudy Giuliani's cosmopolitan playground. She's going to CLARIFY her position on Iran? OOOOH. That's SURE to be REALLY interesting. For a woman who's touted as Alaska's Greatest Moosehunter, she seems to do a lot of shooting fish in a barrel.

Anyway, they should just send Amy Poehler. That way there would at least be one person there not offering a pale imitation of a stateswoman. And HRC can assiduously continue to not degrade her brand by equating it with Palin's.

MEGAN: Welll, but she'll meet other world leaders that also want to yell at A'jad. And then, as he exits, their eyes will meet across the plaza, the music will swell, the yelling people will seem to quiet around them. Time will stop as their love blossoms, Jason. It'll be a new era in America's policy toward Iran, one filled with musical montages, Central Park carriage rides and hot, sweaty sex between two uptight brunettes. And Hillary Clinton, with nearly as sensitive a gag reflex as my own (just ask Bill and that one ex-boyfriend of mine), needs not to hurl on camera, so she's opting to miss it.

JASON: Naturally, some of the Jewish organizations are seeking to have the invitation to Palin rescinded:

The National Jewish Democratic Council called late today for Palin's invitation to be lifted as well. "Monday's protest against Ahmadinejad is too important to be tainted by partisanship," Marc R. Stanley, the council's chairman, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the campaign of Senator John McCain is much more interested in scoring political points than insuring there is bipartisan solidarity around the anti- Ahmadinejad efforts.

"Therefore, we call upon the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations to withdraw the invitation to Governor Sarah Palin and we applaud Senator Hillary Clinton's decision to not attend the rally after the attendance of Palin was announced."

MEGAN: It probably doesn't help that the Republican Jewish Coalition is running anti-Obama push polls.

JASON: And that's what happens when your convention speech includes a drop in, quoting Westbrook Pegler.

MEGAN: Oh, well, sure. But Palin's a Republican. Quoting notorious anti-Semites who also advocated for the assassination of RFK is cool as long as you're deeply committed to hating Iran and the Palestinians and whomever else we're supposed to hate. It's such a long list, I keep forgetting it all.

JASON: Half the country is on that list!

MEGAN: And like most of the rest of the world, it seems.
Anyway, so, someone hacked Palin's email. Yawn.

JASON: Yes. I saw that. Sort of couldn't avoid that!

MEGAN: Oh, wait, it proves that — as she's all but admitted to — she uses her personal e-mail for business. Great. Well, now that it's been hacked, both accounts are wiped from the servers and can't be retrieved. Way to go hackers! I know this because my Yahoo account got hacked a few months back and the guy erased my entire inbox and Yahoo was like, well, it's gone. Sorry.

JASON: Yeah. Naturally, there doesn't seem to have been anything INTERESTING in her inbox. Pictures of her family. Some phone numbers. Someone wrote her an email telling her that God was awesome.

MEGAN: God is pretty awesome, She and I totally get beer together sometimes and bitch about men. She apologizes for fucking that up a little, but free will seemed like a good idea at the time.

JASON: Real game-changing stuff! But Gawker got it, and the pageviews that come along with it. So, that will all be a part of one Nick's "SUCK IT ALEX AND CHOIRE, LOOK AT MY TOTALLY AWESOME SITEVIEWS" posts.

MEGAN: Which I read with rapt attention and think are incredibly genius. You know that.
[Tries to distract Jason with shiny things] Hey, look, Palin's the CEO of Alaska!

JASON: I view myself as the CEO of my junk.

Oh. I am petitioning Arlington County High Schools to get Nick's posts entered into the AP English curriculum. Honestly, they are an improvement over TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES.

MEGAN: I mean, though, what isn't an improvement over Tess? It's not Hardy's best work. There's no metaphorical emasculation through inadvertent castration. (Yes, I've read a lot of Thomas Hardy. Who can identify that book and impress me?)

JASON: See. That's what Nick provides! Metaphorical emasculation!
Speaking of Fiorina, Sam Stein told me yesterday, upon his return from seeing Our Lady Of The Elite Elitism Haterz, that she used Fiorina's "captive to choice" line. Or whatever it was. The Democratic Party holds women captive on abortion? That one? That beautiful marriage of corporate PR and gender subjugation?

MEGAN: I know, except she called it a noose!

JASON: A noose? Nice.

MEGAN: But, you know, not around African-American women, of which she presumably knows many. Lynn Forester de Rothschild totally has black friends.

JASON: Oh. The Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is straight gangsta. The Lady Lynn will take up the cause of ensuring women that they know they shouldn't be captive to the idea that they are more than a sack of meat to jack sperm into.

MEGAN: The tyranny of choice shall not ruin this great nation! Lynn, please come save me from my right to have an abortion if I get pregnant from a sexual assault, and stroke my hair at the hospital and tell me how good it feels that we didn't elect an elitist. And maybe could you help pay for my rape kit? 'Cause I'm gonna need the help once John McCain makes my health insurance unaffordable and Palin charges me for it.

Oh, God, Karl Rove speaks! He doesn't think everyone will love Palin forever, but someone forgot to let him know that the new talking point is not to call Obama a first-term Senator less they remind people that he's been in office in the Senate longer than she's been a governor.

JASON: I think Rove is late to the party with that revelation. But back to Fiorina, she's not only making sure women are held captive to choice, she made sure that American consumers weren't held captive to only being able to by quality computers, by ensuring them that they'd have the choice to buy Hewlett-Packards. Which are like a motherboard shoved inside a cows ass.

MEGAN: Wait, didn't Carly nearly ensure that no one had a choice to buy HPs, what with almost driving the country into the ground?

JASON: Yes. I didn't say Carly was GOOD at her job! Only that she got a shit ton of money to leave it. Yesterday, when I heard that McCain was going to make her disappear, I wondered if she was expecting another $21 million severance package.

MEGAN: Not even Karl Rove gets that much, and he doesn't suck at his job.

JASON: I'm not sure how this relates, but you want to know what the Sarah Palin baby name generator gave me for my name?

MEGAN: What?

JASON: Taupe Armageddon. So, what can I say. This Sarah Palin thing hasn't been ALL bad.

MEGAN: I think I might beat that: I am "Tangle Jig Palin."

JASON: OMG. We have the best Sarah Palin names ever.

MEGAN: My Sarah Palin child alter-ego should totally go hunting and drink beer with your Sarah Palin child alter-ego.

JASON: "Tangle Jig Palin" sounds like some sort of hallucinogenic tea!

MEGAN: Which we should drink deeply of while riding in an airplane shooting at wolves!

JASON: We will drink Sangria with Jose Zapatero! And visit Hillary Clinton in New York.

MEGAN: Who will totally be our mom's new BFF if only that mean Obama man will stop trying to come between them because they both totes know what sexism is like.

Because it's run by Yahoo, the site knew my Yahoo screenname, so I was curious what I'd find when I clicked the section "My Stuff." That page holds a section called "Posts You'll Love." They are: "6 ways to eat bread dining out and save on calories," (eh, no thanks) "Top 10 deadbeat dads, Los Angeles style" (what?) "Horse drugs, peanuts, and other crazy celeb diet secrets" (interesting, but I think I read it in one of the Midweek Madness mags already.)

Poking around some more, I did find a post I liked called "Dear Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: I Love You," and I learned about a web site where you can exchange books with people. I checked my horoscope, which was comes in a one-liner, "quickie" (Today, you will prove to yourself that you are capable of more than you thought.) The "Healthy Living Pick Of The Day" is a cute pirate-inspired swim cap, but why the wordy headline? Why not just call it "Cute Stuff" or "Cute Thing Of The Day" ? The story called "Is Liz Lemon the new Mary Richards?" was fun, but in general, I'm not sure if there's any urgency or "hook" to Shine. Where's the zip? The pizazz? The chutzpah, as exhibited by Yahoo's General Manager, who parks her car in spots reserved for expectant mothers, even though she's not with child? Jane magazine's Brandon Holley is the Editor-In-Chief, after all. Will 40 million women start using Shine as their homepage? Time will tell. But to be honest, I found Shine a little dull.

Yahoo Introduces Shine, A Site For Women [Reuters]
Yahoo Launches Site Focused on Women [AP]
Yahoo To Launch Site For Women [Wall Street Journal]
Yahoo GM Not Expecting, Just Parking Like She Is [Valleywag]
Shine [Yahoo]

Earlier: The 'W' In 'Web' Stands For Women

Predictably, there aren't many women in Yahoo's '50 Most Important People on the Web'*, so you'd think they'd be pretty, well, important, wouldn't you?

It all starts well, with Marissa Mayer, VP for search products and user experience at Google at number 9. Pretty impressive. At number 14, we welcome Shana Fisher, who is "Senior Vice President for strategy and M&A, IAC/InterActiveCorp". That's so impressive we don't have a fuck what it means. Way to go, girl! Things are a wee bit dry on the woman front until we hit number 28, where we find Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay. Yay! We've even heard of her!

And that's your lot.

Oh wait. Who's that creeping in at number 50, a mere four places behind creator of the known universerse World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee?

Why, it's Tila Tequila! No, we've never heard of her either, so we think she must be thrillingly technologically important. And she is. Guess what? She's got a Myspace page, with 1.6 million 'friends'! Hoooooo!

But that's not all!

"She has posed for Stuff magazine, she has a part in an Adam Sandler film currently in production, and her MySpace page currently boasts more than 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments."

Stuff Magazine! Adam Sandler! This girl is the fucking BIG TIME. Oh yeah.

[Yahoo's 50 most important nerds] Yahoo.com

*And yes, our lord and master is also on the list. But he's only five above Tila, and that's GOTTA hurt.

Beauty treatments and cosmetics seem to send rapper Foxy Brown into a rage. Now the pouty-lipped label-whore is in hot water again after an altercation at a Florida beauty-supply shop yesterday:

Rapper Foxy Brown was arrested in Florida and held overnight for battery and obstruction of justice, according to the arrest record and local newspaper reports on Friday.

Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand, was detained at a Pembroke Pines beauty-supply shop on Thursday night after a disturbance there, The Miami Herald newspaper said.

"Battery"? "Obstruction of justice"? We think those may be code for "She hit a cop!". No word yet on whether this latest arrest will affect the 3 years' probation Foxy received after her last freak-out. We can only hope.

Foxy Brown Arrested in Florida [Yahoo]

Foxy Brown Busted [TheSmokingGun]

Britney Spears, once known as a singer, was the most searched person on Yahoo's site for the fifth time in six years (beaten out in 2004 by Paris Hilton). We know Brit's done some remarkable things lately—married a nobody, had two babies and is now divorcing her stinky husband—but can someone tell us what exactly is it that keeps people interested in this ho'? http://www.rte.ie/arts/2006/1205/spearsb.html