Vogue India Gets Non-Whitewashed Cover; Carolina Herrera In Tiff With Tinsley

By Jenna Sauers | April 13, 2010 | 4:40pm

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Vogue India, which has been criticized in the past for promoting only light skin as beautiful, has five darker-skinned models on its new cover. [Vogue UK]
Illustrator Kate Bingaman-Burt drew everything she purchased since 2006, and made a book. [Racked]
Carolina Herrera is miffed that she ended up on Tinsley Mortimer‘s reality show. “It’s not my aspiration to appear on a reality show,” she says. “That’s the last thing I need in my life.” The designer says she ran into the socialite at the Metropolitan Opera last fall, and said a few kind words about the end of Mortimer’s marriage. The way she tells it, she was asked to sign a release, but assumed it was for still photography. Um, weren’t the huge television cameras a clue? [P6]
A multi-million-dollar bribery scandal encompassing China and Latin America has led Avon to suspend four of its executives, including the former head of its internal auditing unit. Anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal that Avon paid for government officials’ international travel and entertainment in order to gain preferential treatment. [WSJ]
Meanwhile, Keri Hilson joins Avon‘s roster of celebrity faces. She replaces Jennifer Hudson. [WWD]
Here we were thinking that the recession would wipe out the inane practice of applying “couture” to any ill-advised fashion project and having people buy it. Behold: $1,000 “couture” jeans, made out of other jeans. [Vogue UK]
Well. That was quick. Alexander McQueen: Genius of a Generation, a 128-page (120 picture) book about the late designer will go on sale in May. [Telegraph]
Susannah Frankel on Riccardo Tisci‘s resuscitation of the house of Givenchy, and the unsuccessful experiments that preceded him. [Independent]
In this excerpt from his book The Other Side Of The Picture, ex-Nina Ricci designer Olivier Theyskens discusses body image, and his childhood identification as a girl rather than as a boy. (He later realized he wouldn’t be happier as a woman, so he abandoned his dream to get a sex change.) “At the end of the 1980s, when I was an adolescent, the stereotype was the huge, muscular man. I never felt insecure about not being big, because I was doing a lot of sports and I could jump 2 metres high. Since then, things have evolved, and fashion embraces more possibilities now. I’m fortunate to be part of that generation when androgyny became fashionable, and I can have my hair long enough to tie back, with a beard.” [ToL]
Joan Collins says it’s a shame that jeans will soon be permitted at the restaurant in the Ritz. Naturally, when she was young and jeans were outrageous, Joan Collins was the first to wear them. (She bought them from the men’s section and sat in a hot bath to shrink them.) And equally naturally, when denim was novel and exciting, she had her own jeans line, JC, with Sir Philip Green. But now? Jeans are so over, kids. When she looks at people wearing them, Joan Collins sees nothing but “a sea of blue-legged homogeny, in different shapes and sizes.” [Daily Mail]
Carol Quinn, a longtime executive at Ford, has left the agency to set up her own shop. And she’s taken Rachel Hunter, Kelly Rutherford, and Christie Brinkley with her. Ford recently saw the departure of women’s board head Caroline Poznansky, who went to Supreme. Simultaneously, Paul Rowland, the founder of Supreme, came on board at Ford. Bookers and models at both agencies also swapped places. [P6]
Emma Roberts, profiled today in Women’s Wear Daily, has five movies coming out this year. So expect her to get a clothing line/perfume endorsement/branded shoe collection shortly. Oh, you’d best believe she has planned for that eventuality: “I want to do something in fashion that wouldn’t be cheesy. I wouldn’t do, like, Emma Roberts for Target. I’d want do to something more like the Olsen twins did, Elizabeth and James and The Row, something that is really cool, wearable and still unique.” Julia Roberts is her aunt. [WWD]
Big shoulders are “beyond over, residing as they now do in ye olde junkyard of discarded trends where the likes of gladiator sandals rot, with only the possibility of some kind of ironic revival or discovery by Wall-E to give them hope for the future,” says Hadley Freeman. [Guardian]
Miu Miu has had shoes for a while, so I’m not sure exactly what makes these ones part of a “capsule collection” of footwear for the brand. But they are pretty damn cute. And unfortunately they start at £300 a pair. [Elle UK]
This photo of a bunch of male Dolce & Gabbana models in their underwear, next to the guest list of the White House Correspondents Dinner, is cracking us up. [WWD]
A black taffeta strapless gown that Princess Diana wore to her first official engagement with Prince Charles, recently rediscovered in the archives of the designer who made it, will go under the hammer in England. It’s expected to fetch up to £50,000. Photographs of Diana’s cleavage as she exited her car outside the party created a sensation. [Telegraph]
There’s very little to do in small towns in the Midwest. It’s probably lucky that teenager Elizabeth Rasmusen found collecting Wrigley‘s wrappers and lovingly weaving them into a prom dress bodice and matching vest for her boyfriend, rather than meth. [CBS]
L’Wren Scott, born Luann Bambrough in Roy, Utah, learned to sew as a child. “I could rip a seam apart and have this massive piece of stunning silk jacquard that you would never in your life find where I grew up,” says the designer. She eventually started her own line after she couldn’t find a knee-length black dress to wear to an event, and so she whipped one up out of two meters of crepe. [WWD]
Ralph Lauren opened a store-that-is-not-a-store in Paris. “This is beyond a store,” he said, helpfully. [WWD]
Perhaps one of the ways L. L. Bean is being thrifty is by hiring one-legged models. [Photoshop Disasters]
Mark Ronson‘s sneaker collection for Gucci, which goes on sale at a pop-up in London on April 22nd, boasts 17 “exclusive” styles. [Dazed Digital]
Meanwhile, Gucci is adding children’s wear to its offerings starting late this summer. You know, for those 8-year-olds who want to look like leather-clad rock groupies with bed hair. [Vogue UK]
In other unusual fashion combinations, Marchesa is designing a line of tableware for Lenox. [Fashionista]
Alice + Olivia is launching a small makeup collection with M.A.C. on July 8. It includes some banging turquoise nail polish. [WWD]
Ditto Aldo, which is getting its own line of 14 nail lacquers. [InStyle UK]
We have no idea why this article refers to clothing swaps by the rather unmusical term “swishing,” but in our experience getting as many women as possible into one room to swap their (clean, nice) clothes is a great way to cadge awesome stuff and get your drink on. We always schedule a Goodwill or SalvA pickup for the leftovers. [Guardian]
First-quarter revenue at Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy is up 11%. Fashion and leather goods, i.e. Louis Vuitton, is up 8% overall. The numbers aren’t broken out by brand. [WSJ]
Tatiana von Furstenberg got her mother, Diane, to design the costumes for her debut film, Tanner Hall. DVF’s twitter feed last night, during the premiere, was full of praise for her daughter. [W]
Puma is replacing its shoeboxes with cardboard frames that will support re-usable shoe bags. It’ll save loads of paper, and the lighter packages will be cheaper to ship. [Reuters]
Holy shit, Richard Chai gets his hair cut once a week? [Details]
Fashion blind item: Which it-girl Brit threw a copy of the Topshop magazine at a sales clerk who said she’d have to look her up in the system in order to give her her VIP discount? “Don’t you know I’m a style icon,” indeed. [Fashionista]
Pinault-Printemps Redoute has named three women to four-year terms on its board. [Vogue UK]
Rebecca Minkoff is bucking the trend of designers launching lower-priced lines. She’s adding a handbag collection to her line that will retail for $550-$2,000. “There’s real gold in the rose-gold hardware,” she says. [Style.com]
Prada sent specially blended tea to editors to promote its new fragrances. [W]
Chew on Robin Givhan‘s review of Deborah Ball‘s House of Versace. It’s tasty. [WaPo]