Did Gucci Defraud Rihanna Because She's Caribbean?

A former member of Gucci‘s legal team who is now suing the brand for racial discrimination alleges that once her boss found out Rihanna was from Barbados, he said that Gucci would find a way to bilk the star out of 30% of her fee for endorsing a line of accessories. “When [Gucci international tax counsel Stan] Sherwood discovered that Rihanna was from a Caribbean island,” reads the lawsuit, “he told [complainant Josephine] Robinson to ‘tax the hell out of her’ and find a way to allow Gucci to withhold 30 percent of her fee.” Rihanna’s ads for Gucci’s “Tattoo Heart” collection bowed in 2008; she was paid an undisclosed fee for her services, but Forbes put her 2008 income at $15 million. Gucci denies Robinson’s allegation. [NYPost]

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These python men’s sandals from Lanvin cost $995. And they look like a ski boot mated with a surf sock and had horrible snakeskin-covered babies. [TLF]

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• Miuccia Prada personally earned over $12.7 million last year. Her husband, Prada C.E.O. Patrizio Bertelli, earned $13.1 million. Prada made public this information ahead of its widely anticipated IPO, which is set to take place later this month. [WWD]
• One company that won’t be making any such disclosures is the pricey outerwear brand Moncler, which just canceled its planned IPO. Instead, Moncler just sold a 45% stake to Eurazeo, a Paris-based investment fund, for $611 million. [WWD]
• Whoever headlined this story “Fashion Industry Prepares Lovefest for Marc Jacobs” is a God among men. [AP]
• Helena Christensen wears glasses to feel smart: “I don’t wear prescription glasses, but I wear glasses because I think they make you look more interesting and a little bit smarter. They make me feel grown-up.” [Vogue UK]
• Cadbury says it is very sorry about that ad that implicitly compared Naomi Campbell to a piece of chocolate. [Guardian UK]
• A Swedish model named Carolyn Forsling is suing Estée Lauder for making her the face of a national ad campaign for wrinkle cream without her permission. Forsling was doing a job for a hair-care client when the photographer snapped her picture for the lighting test; she hadn’t had hair and makeup yet. Apparently, the photographer then sold the shot to Estée Lauder, which Photoshopped half of Forsling’s face to look wrinkly and discolored, and called the image a “dramatization” of the effects of one of its creams. Forsling is upset about the unauthorized (and unpaid) use of her image by a large cosmetics company, and she’s also upset that the ad implies she falls into the 45-60 age group. [NYDN]
• Yohji Yamamoto will become a Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters. [WWD]
• Josie Natori, the lingerie brand, is doing a collection for Target. It’ll go on sale October 30. [WWD]
• Katy Perry shot an upcoming cover of Rolling Stone with Terry Richardson. [P6]
• L’Wren Scott has a new handbag called the Lula. The smallest available Lula costs $2300. [WWD]
• Kate Middleton‘s McQueen wedding dress, wedding cake, and diamond earrings will all go on public display at Buckingham Palace this summer. [Vogue UK]
• Donna Karan created an award and named it after her late husband. The recipients of the inaugural Urban Zen Steven Weiss Apple Awards are Bill Clinton, Dr. Oz, and Courtney Ross. Donna Karan is basically go big or go home. [WWD]
• Jamie Hince had his bachelor party this weekend. Alison Mosshart came. They went to dinner, a show, and then drank at a hotel. [Vogue UK]
• Jewelry from Ivanka Trump‘s new “ethical” line of diamonds (the gems are from Canada, the precious metals are recycled) starts at $15,000. [WWD]
• Eva Green, on John Galliano: “I haven’t spoken to him. It’s difficult to talk about this subject, because I don’t really know what happened. He is extremely fragile, a very sensitive, creative person with a great sense of humour and he’s always been so kind to me. He’s very shy. I adore him. It’s been very brutal and I really…I just wish he could go back in time and for it not to happen. I’m sure he’s going to get back [in to fashion] because he’s so talented. Sometimes, you can make mistakes. I don’t think he’s anti-semitic. I’m Jewish. I don’t think he has anything against the Jews. I think it’s more that he was probably a bit drunk.” [Vogue UK]
• Glamour — the biggest-selling magazine in Condé Nast’s stable — has seen a 17% drop in newsstand sales from last year during the first four months of 2011. That’s about $1.5 million in lost newsstand revenue. “We’re looking at the sales for the first couple months of this year and we’re thinking, ‘Geez, we’ve got to fight even harder to keep these girls,'” says editor Cindi Leive. “It’s the classic thing. A girl has 1.7 seconds at the newsstand to make her decision about your magazine. Are we using that 1.7 seconds as well as we should? If we need to do that more ferociously and with different people and different topics, then we will.” [WWD]
• Wall Street Journal fashion writer Tina Gaudoin‘s teenage sons are label-obsessed. [WSJ]
• Bryanboy is hitting back at his “entitled” blog readers: “Blogs are not ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books where you get to choose what happens next,” he writes. And for those of you missing the bitchy Bryanboy tone of old, he’s beyond that now: “Unwarranted bitching on the internet to get attention is a thing of the past, a very old trick. I don’t know about you but it’s embarrassing bitching about someone and then meeting them in person.” [Bryanboy]
• When identical images of models trying on glasses turned up on two websites with similar, sub-$100 eyeglass-selling business models — Warby Parker, which launched last year, and Bluefly-owned competitor Eyefly, which launched last week — we thought it was possible each had bought the rights to the same photos. Or something. Nope! Turns out Eyefly just straight up stole Warby Parker’s pictures; they were using them as “placeholders,” see, and accidentally pushed them live. Warby Parker donates one pair of glasses to charity for every pair sold, which makes this extra shitty. [Racked]