Mindy Kaling Shops At Loehmann's, And Other Tales

Further evidence that Mindy Kaling is thoroughly and completely awesome: she shops at Loehmann’s, you guys. (And she reads this very blog!) Refinery29 interviewed Kaling about her style. She calls her style “a very ethnic/New Money aesthetic” and says she wishes she could be one of those cool girls who wears Helmut Lang leggings and monochromatic, asymmetrical tops and whatnot, but she always ends up drawn to the bright and the colorful. “I am all about statement necklaces over gray T-shirts this fall. I’ll so be the woman at the ArcLight wearing the 30lb ethnic African necklace and people don’t know if English is my first language.” [Refinery29]

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When asked his opinion of various movies about fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier — who costumed the new Almodovar film — isn’t shy. He finds Prêt-A-Porter not sarcastic enough. And The Devil Wears Prada fails because “Anna Wintour is a lot more monstrous than she is described!” he laughs. You won’t be laughing when none of your clothes are ever photographed for Vogue again, buddy! Given the opportunity to make amends by the reporter, who asked if he thought Wintour was “a positive figure,” Gaultier said only, “She is a figure.” [Independent]

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Solve Sundsbo shot the new cover of Vogue Italia Beauty. It’s wet. [Models.com]

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Crystal Renn, Andrej Pejic, Lea T., Hanne Gaby Odiele, Jeneil Williams, Jenny Shimizu, and Hannelore Knuts, among others, star in this gender-bending promotional clip for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis‘ upcoming AIDS benefit. [Vimeo]

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Models damage their hair and feet for a living, basically. [Fashionista]

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We truly respect Coco Rocha‘s devotion to makeup. Lip glosses arranged in order of color! Shadows laid out with military precision! “I like my makeup,” she says. “I like anything and everything, the more the better. That’s why I have it all. It’s funny when I see other models that I’ve worked with on the street and they say, surprised, ‘Were you working? Why do you have makeup on?’ almost like, ‘Why would a girl ever wear makeup?’ And I don’t understand, because every other girl does, at least something, but models don’t wear anything. I mean, they will not even wear cover-up. I just don’t understand because you learn everything…you learn all the tricks of the trade, why not use it on yourself?” [Into The Gloss]

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Chloë Moretz may be too young to see Taxi Driver — “My mom won’t let me watch it,” she says — but she apparently isn’t too young to re-enact it for a Harper’s Bazaar spread with Keanu Reeves. [The Cut]

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• Karl Lagerfeld says of Coco Chanel, “What I did, she never did, she would have hated.” [CNN]
• The bosom that will amply fill this year’s $2.5 million diamond-encrusted Victoria’s Secret show bra has been announced, and it belongs to none other than Miranda Kerr. Girl’s really putting her vagina on the line for us all; Kerr, we salute you. Also, Kanye West is going to play at the show. [Telegraph]
• Vivienne Westwood is not interested in pop music (“I don’t think anything’s happening”) and prefers books to fashion magazines: “I’m very much a literary person. And my fashion always tells a story somehow. I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring. To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read. More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have. You know, all those incredible geniuses concentrated their lifetimes’ experiences in books. It’s much better than chattering away to somebody who’s never read anything and knows nothing at all.” [Interview]
• Although it announced middling annual results yesterday — profits fell by 12% and sales rose by just 0.7% — Uniqlo is obviously pushing ahead with tonight’s opening of its new Fifth Avenue store, its second in the U.S. and, at 89,000 square feet, its largest worldwide. Uniqlo is also opening a London flagship tomorrow, and a third New York City store, on 34th Street, next week. At tonight’s party, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Sharon Jones, Santigold, and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy are expected to perform. [P6]
• Miss Piggy is now a face of MAC cosmetics. [Racked]
• Alexa Chung is filming a new reality show, to be called 24 Hour Catwalk. Apparently it’ll sort of be like Project Runway on speed, with four designers competing in 24-hour bursts to complete challenges and win $10,000. Every episode features a new cast of hopefuls, and they have to impress Chung, designer Cynthia Rowley (whose gallerist husband Bill Powers also hosts a reality show, Bravo’s Work of Art), publicist James LaForce, and fashion writer Derek Blasberg. [Fashionologie]
• Ron Burkle is angling to take over American Apparel‘s line of credit, which is currently furnished by Bank of America (to the tune of $60 million). But Lion Capital, the private-equity fund that holds most of the troubled hipster clothier’s debt — about $86 million worth — is fighting Burkle, because Lion knows that Burkle wants to enlarge the credit line to $90 million and make himself into AA’s biggest creditor. Weirdly, American Apparel C.E.O. Dov Charney is all for the proposed deal, even though Burkle plans to charge him a higher interest rate than BofA. He wants to open more stores in Asia. American Apparel has defaulted on its debt covenants with Lion several times, and every time, Lion ups its interest rates. Lion sees Burkle as a threat to its control of the company. [NYPost]
• A lot of people sell items from designer collaborations, like the now-infamous Missoni for Target collection, on eBay. Who buys a $44 dress for $300? Mostly people who live in countries where there are no Targets, see. What doesn’t have much value in the secondary market? Any other designer diffusion line, like DKNY, Vera Wang for Kohl’s, or Marc by Marc Jacobs, that’s available year round. The limited duration of collab lines makes them extra enticing, apparently. [NYTimes]
• Tiffany is doing the jewelry for The Great Gatsby adaptation. [WWD]
• The point of this story seems to be: some people spend a lot of money on clothes when they are in college. [NYTimes]
• And now, a moment with Hadley Freeman, who really, really, really loves Kanye West and his unbridled enthusiasm for fashion:
• what makes Kanye more than just the Robbie Williams of the rap world is his childlike enthusiasm for things other than himself, usually expressed with heavy leaning on the caps lock key. I thought his eager and indefatigable fashion shows attendance was proof of his enthusiasm, but I had no idea. When he presented Phoebe Philo with her international award at the CFDA fashion awards, he tearfully recounted visiting Chloé stores around the world just to stroke the bags and admire the stitching. By the time she got up on stage, she had to comfort the near sobbing West.
• [Guardian]