- This makes so much sense! Levi's sizing system is now taking into account one very important metric: your ass. Because bodies are three-dimensional, and sometimes people with the same measurements are very different shapes.
From this season on, women's jeans in the same waist sizes will be graded Slight Curve, Demi Curve, or Bold Curve, to reflect smaller or larger differences between waist and hip size. The company based its new sizing system on anthropometric data from 60,000 female body scans in 13 countries, and the initial roll-out includes jeans sized 22-34. [WWD]
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- Kate Moss — rocking a shaggy pixie cut — Naomi Campbell, and Lady Gaga each got a cover of i-D. [HuffPo]
- Wal-Mart has given around $460,000, or 54% of its PAC money, to Democratic candidates in the House and Senate so far this election cycle, and 45% to Republicans. In 2008's elections, the retailer gave $655,000 to Republicans and $573,000 to Democrats. [WWD]
- Terry Richardson, who wouldn't know a new concept if it gave him a blow job, shot Sisley's campaign again. [Copyranter]
- Isabel Toledo's husband, the fashion illustrator Ruben, played in German performance artist/countertenor Klaus Nomi's band in the early 80s, before Nomi's life was claimed by AIDS. "He played a homemade sci-fi tambourine and two bamboo sticks," reports the designer. [WWD]
- Former chess champ Carmen Kass attributes her modeling success to the game. "Chess trains you to see through the head. You can make better choices, you can analyse good and bad, and you can see further. Life is a chain of command — basically, one thing leads to another, and if you make the wrong move, there are consequences." [Vogue UK]
- Alexander Wang's campaign for his lower-priced T line features Zoe Kravitz. [WWD]
- Tom Mycoskie of Toms Shoes says his company is about to give away its millionth pair of shoes, in Argentina. Toms, founded in 2006, donates one pair of shoes to needy children for every pair it sells, for $44-$95, in stores like Neiman Marcus. [WWD]
- Unless this is an old piece that has been re-gurgitated by mistake — and its author, Hilary Alexander, does get Anna Wintour's age wrong — this reads as though Alexander literally just woke up, decided to read some two-year-old gossip about Wintour's retirement, and wrote a tendentious opinion column about it. Maybe she should turn on the Internet more often; it might keep her up-to-date. [Telegraph]
- Women are supposedly buying fewer thongs and more "big pants," because of Mad Men. [Daily Mail]
- Male model Jon Kortajarena, who had a supporting role in A Single Man as a hustler, looks fantastic in the new Pepe Jeans campaign. Oh, yeah — Alexa Chung is also in it. [Telegraph]
- Tinsley Mortimer has around 500-1,000 pairs of shoes. She's not sure exactly how many because a bunch are in storage. [WWD]
- Charles Guislain, 16, lives in Paris and likes fashion — this much you could tell from the YouTube videos Diane Pernet keeps making of him, and the fact that he caught the eye of Tim Walker, who shot Guislain for Vogue Italia. Guislain says he's reading Rimbaud, Barthes, and Proust for school, and says that in fashion, "there are too many rude people. People forget that fashion can also be funny." [T]
- Cheap clothes are mostly manufactured in horrendous conditions by a desperately poor, largely female, workforce, at significant human and environmental cost. [Guardian]
- Lawyers, industry lobbyists, and intellectual-property experts say that the proposed design piracy bill introduced to the Senate by Charles Schumer will need to be interpreted by the courts, and could lead to a period of confusion. The bill attempts to set a standard for "unique and original," and if a design meets that standard, its creators earn the right to sue any other designer who creates a "substantially identical" knock-off. The retail industry is largely split on the bill, since it comprises both high-end stores that tend to be the victims of knock-off artists, and also the mass-market stores that tend to sell "inspired by" clothing. [WWD]
- Rogue Tailor Terrorises London! [WSJ]
- Evanthe, a contractor that develops stores for brands like Louis Vuitton and Prada, has bought the label Malo for a bargain $8-$10 million. Malo was owned by IT Holding SpA, which has been in bankruptcy protection since early 2009. [WWD]
- Jimmy Choo might be on the block for a significantly higher price: around £500 million. [Telegraph]