Vogue Crops Kim Kardashian Out of Its Met Ball Slideshow

Ooof. Vogue cropped Kim Kardashian out of its slideshow of the best looks of the Met Ball, leaving just a ghostly, floral-printed hand floating next to Kanye West, whose get-up the magazine praised. Kardashian’s custom Givenchy gown has been widely panned as a red-carpet outfit and has already inspired Internet parodies. All the other duos who appear in the slideshow remained intact for their photos. [Vogue.com]

Tisci, the Givenchy creative director, defends the look. “People can say what they want,” he says. “To me, pregnancy is the most beautiful thing in the world, and when you celebrate something, you give people flowers. I think she looked amazing.”

“I love Kim. Doing maternity was fantastic. I wanted to have a Kim Kardashian moment, because Kim always supports me. She is the future wife of a really good friend of mine. I wanted to have a moment of family…Kim, Kanye and the baby. It will be a family that I will be close to. Kim said, ‘Ricky, I love what you’re doing so much, I am in your hands.’ I said, we should give her our punk moment with a romantic beautiful flower-printed dress.”

[WWD]

Tisci also dressed Frank Ocean for the Met Ball and posted a number of photos of the singer to his Instagram, including an image of (apparently) Ocean’s bow tie lying on a bed with the caption “Please don’t go,” prompting speculation that the designer has a little crush. [ONTD]

In other Tisci news, he sold his New York apartment for just over $3 million to friend Marina Abramovic. [Curbed]

• Survivors of the Rana Plaza factory building collapse in Bangladesh protested yesterday when the local garment manufacturers’ association failed to give them promised payments of lost wages and compensation. Thousands of garment workers blocked traffic on a highway after the association said it needed more time to get an accurate list of victims. The death toll from the disaster currently stands at 715, and is expected to continue to rise as hundreds of workers remain missing. Three engineers who worked on the illegally constructed eight-story building have now been arrested, along with the owners of several of the factories that were its tenants, and building owner Sohel Rana. After international attention was drawn to protests over slowness in compensating the families of the 112 workers who died in last November’s fire at the Tazreen garment factory, also in Bangladesh, the government yesterday paid just under $9,000 in compensation to the families of another 36 garment workers. [WWD]

• Parsons has cancelled the planned three-day master class taught by John Galliano over disagreements with the disgraced designer after failing to reach agreement over the size and composition of the audience for “a larger forum, which would include a frank discussion of his career” that the school had made a condition of the teaching gig. [Fashionista, NYTimes]

• Same-store sales at struggling retailer J.C. Penney fell year-on-year by 16.6% during the first quarter. This was a worse drop than analysts had expected given the firing of controversial C.E.O. Ron Johnson, whose sales strategy backfired so badly last year, leading to a loss of nearly $1 billion. [Reuters]

• Remember the diamond heist at Brussels airport that netted $50 million worth of precious stones? Police have arrested over 40 people in Belgium and Switzerland, allegedly members of the same gang, in connection with the robbery. [WWD]

• The Times today profiles Carmelo Anthony’s stylist, Bed-Stuy boutique owner Khalilah Williams-Webb. “The goal was to make him look more like a gentleman, to make him be more relatable, in a sense,” says Williams-Webb. [NYTimes]

• An exhibition of some of the late stylist Isabella Blow’s clothing will open in London this November. [WWD]

• Yves Saint Laurent opened a two-story boutique in Paris, the first store that fully reflects new creative director Hedi Slimane’s style. There are no Tribute shoes for sale there. [WWD]

• Lara Stone has given birth to a baby boy, her first child with husband David Walliams. The couple has not yet revealed their son’s name. [Independent]

• According to market analysts, the luxury market in the U.K. is projected to grow by 12% this year, to $11.51 billion, and will post double-digit growth every year for the next five years. [WWD]

• And now, a moment with legendary former model, new Frederick Douglass Award winner, and longtime activist for greater racial diversity in fashion Bethann Hardison. Hardison says she was motivated by last season’s fairly dismal diversity at New York fashion week to renew her activism. “After seeing the numbers from the 2013 February shows — 9% Asian, 6% black, 2% Latin, 0.3% other and 82.7% white — that’s when I knew I had to get back out there,” she says, incidentally quoting our latest runway diversity report. Bethann, what motivates you to keep advocating for change?

“Iman told me, ‘You’re the only person who doesn’t get anything out of this. Why do you do this? You’re not a model, so you’re not going to get more work. You’re not an agency, so you’re not going to get more money.’ I can’t be comfortable knowing these things happen. You don’t have that many people in the world of quote-unquote fashion that care to make anything different.”