Numéro magazine has a new cover editorial starring top model Karlie Kloss. The largely nude spread was shot in black and white by photographer Greg Kadel. But there are some stark differences between the photographs released by Kadel and those that appear in the magazine. Numéro, it seems, liked that Kloss was so thin but hated that her thinness made her bones more apparent. So in a have-your-cake kind of gesture, it made the bones disappear with Photoshop.

This is one of the images from the editorial in question. On the left is Numéro's version; on the right is Kadel's. You can see the uncensored photo here.

Yesterday, when Kadel's images started hitting fashion blogs, the fact that Kloss's bones hadn't been Photoshopped out was one of the things we first noticed. Kadel's images were most likely also retouched — always a safe assumption with any fashion photograph, and the photographer has not claimed otherwise — but his retouching didn't take away Kloss's bones. When Numéro released images that were retouched to such a different standard, Kadel's studio announced the photographer's displeasure:

It was Greg's desire to represent Karlie as she naturally is ... slender, athletic and beautiful. That is why he released the images as he intended them to be seen by the public. He is shocked and dismayed that unbeknownst to him, Numéro took it upon themselves to airbrush over his original images. Greg stands by his original artwork and cannot stress enough that he not only was unaware of the magazine's retouching but also finds the airbrushing of Karlie unacceptable and unnecessary.

One of the requirements for being a fashion model — at least, a straight-size fashion model such as make up the overwhelming majority of the industry — is to be very, very thin and very tall. Most models are at least 5'9" and measure 34"-24"-34" at most; Kloss is 5'11.5" and her measurements are given on her most recent composite cards as 32"-23"-33". To maintain this small size is something that different models face in different ways — but it is something they all must confront, a job requirement not quite like any other. This is not a comment on Kloss's health — of which we can know nothing, based on mere photographs — just an acknowledgement of the standards of the industry she works in.

The result of maintaining such a small body size is bones and musculature that are more visible than they are on people of more average weights. And plenty of people — perhaps lacking, in a visual culture polluted by Photoshop, a realistic sense of how very thin bodies look and move — stand ready to say that any photograph of a woman with a bony chest is "disgusting" or "unfeminine" or "ugly" or "reminiscent of Auschwitz." Or at least those are all examples from (now dismissed) comments on yesterday's post.

Most consumers seem to accept the idea that models are skinny. But they don't like to be confronted with images that show the consequences of being that skinny in a realistic way. They want the bones airbrushed out. It lets them off the hook. And it lets the magazine, one of the clients who is instrumental in setting the standards that models must embody, off the hook, too. In this way, clients get to continue demanding unreasonably skinny models and zero bodily diversity. And they get to Photoshop out any bones that might offend. Or remind consumers of the toll this narrow standard can take on young girls' bodies.

The ease with which photographs can now be digitally manipulated in post-production has left the magazines and brands who produce most of fashion's imagery chasing ever-less-natural standards of "perfection." Retouching that in the darkroom era was time-consuming and expensive now can be done with a few clicks of the mouse. Taking out Kloss's bones, as Numéro has done, adds nothing to these photographs except a veneer of unreality: raising your arms above your head makes almost anyone's rib cage more prominent, regardless of weight, and the lack of it makes the Numéro shot uncanny. As I wrote a few years ago when so-called "reverse retouching" (retouching to take away bones and/or add flesh to models' bodies) hit the headlines, this kind of retouching hardly contributes to a healthy visual culture for women and girls:

We've become conditioned to expect perfected images of skinny, apparently boneless, smooth little girls in our magazines. In a certain way, we've come to rely on Photoshop to insulate us from the sharp reality of what maintaining an industry-approved fighting weight can do to a human body.

Kelly Osbourne is sorry she's not sorry some of you didn't like her nails. The existence of a bottle of nail polish made of diamonds that costs $250,000 nonetheless remains incontrovertible evidence that somewhere along the line we went very, very wrong as a culture. Then Kelly Osbourne Instagrammed another picture of her nails. [@MissKellyO]

• In more worrisome news of the environmental and human impact of the apparel trade, a sack of powder dye used in textile and cosmetics manufacturing fell off a truck in China, burst open, and contaminated two villages. Residents found the dye contaminated homes, clothing, ground water, pets. It is a lung irritant. Worse, because the dye (known as Rhodamine B extra) is water-soluble and highly concentrated, it can only be washed off with a vinegar spray — regular water just makes it more pink. [Austrian Times]
• Ines de la Fressange may be a brand ambassador for Roger Vivier, but that hasn't stopped her from quietly consulting on the planned relaunch of the Schiaparelli brand for the past three years. (Both brands are owned by Diego Della Valle.) De la Fressange says that Della Valle has interviewed several candidates for creative director and will announce a new hire "soon." [WWD]
• Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler are house-hunting. The two recently checked out a townhouse in Fort Greene that the Post calls "gorgeous." It also costs $2.65 million. This fucking city, man. [NYPost]
• Apparently while Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was doing his usual thundering about hegemony and the Jews, etc, at the United Nations members of the Iranian delegation were getting their shop on. The visiting Iranians were after items that are hard to obtain due to U.S. sanctions, so they went to Costco and Payless ShoeSource. [NYDN]
• H&M says the prices at its planned higher-end chain & Other Stories will span around $9 for certain jewelry and accessories to $315 for a leather jacket. & Other Stories has a separate design team headquartered in Paris. [WWD]
• A judge has rejected Daphne Guinness' downstairs neighbors' claim for $1 million in "emotional damages" related to the heiress and fashion icon's repeated flooding of their apartment. But Guinness was found liable for the damage to the apartment. Guinness reportedly has a habit of letting her bath overflow, and a poorly designed bathroom renovation made the water more likely to seep through the floor. Guinness says she has fixed the problem and has already been paying to repair the damage. [NYPost]
• From fiscal 2010 to 2011, sales at Stella McCartney rose 19% to $33.6 million. Profits hit $4.6 million. [WWD]
• Yohji Yamamoto recently said that "fashion is like shit." Women's Wear Daily asked him to explain that comment:

  "Let me talk like an old man. Young people, be careful. Beautiful things are disappearing every day. Be careful.…You don't need to be [shopping at fast-fashion stores], especially young people. They are beautiful naturally, because they are young. So they should even wear simple jeans and a T-shirt. It's enough. Don't be too much fashionable.…The brand advertising is making you crazy. You don't need to be too sexy. You are sexy enough."

  [WWD]

Raf Simons' long-awaited first women's ready-to-wear collection for Christian Dior walked today in Paris. The house was rudderless for a long time after it fired John Galliano, known for his high-falutin' flights of fancy, immediately after he was arrested for directing a racist tirade at a couple of strangers in a café. Dior's search for a new creative director was a long one, and Simons himself only took the job after he was fired from Jil Sander to make way for the German designer's own return to the label that bears her name. The fashion-loving world wanted to know what kind of a match a Belgian minimalist originally best known for his men's wear would make for the storied house of Christian Dior? Today we have our answer: Simons is interested in the house's codes, the bar jacket and the A-line and the H-line (according to the show notes the house live-Tweeted), but he is primarily concerned that they be modern and free.
The show — which you can watch in entirety on the Dior Web site — started with a series of superb skinny black pant suits. The ladies' tux is an Yves Saint Laurent staple, and it was nice to see Simons give his take on le smoking. Each suit was styled with a simple neck scarf. Then the suits morphed into a variety of structured coat-dresses. And having mentioned that live feed, can I just say it was nice for once to see a luxury brand take advantage of online platforms in ways that seemed neither overly commercial (you don't have to "Like" Dior on Facebook or surrender your email address to watch) nor half-assed? The show livestream worked and the live-Tweeted show notes put the looks in context. This way of presenting the show honored the interest of fans precisely because it didn't seem to treat the online audience any differently than it did the seated audience inside the venue.

As we recently learned, the fur industry is booming. Global fur sales rose by 70% from 2000 to 2010. Annual sales of fur pelts reached $15-16 billion, according to the fur industry's trade association, during the winter of 2010-11 (pelts are sold during a season that runs from around October through March, and the 2010-11 season is the most recent for which figures were available). An industry spokesperson attributed the rise primarily to two factors: designers who have incorporated small amounts of fur into a wider array of garments, making fur an option in warmer climates, and "a younger generation whose passion is not animal rights."

This development is surprising to anyone who remembers the highly publicized battles over fur and animal welfare of the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, shocking depictions of the cruelty inherent in fur production — often in the form of polemical and, critics said, misleading videos produced by pro-animal-rights fringe groups — were only starting to reach a wider audience. Protesters were omnipresent at fashion week and public pressure to avoid fur was high. Anna Wintour was served a skinned raccoon at the Four Seasons. It seemed like every week another of your favorite celebrities was stripping off for a PETA ad. By turn of the millennium, the moral issue of fur seemed settled, and fur itself seemed like a relic of a bygone age — something that your grandparents' generation had misguidedly believed was okay, like golliwog dolls or smoking during pregnancy. The idea of wearing something so thoroughly politicized and icky as fur just seemed ugly. Popular culture kept up with the times: when Lily Esposito chided Mary Cherry for her mink coat on Popular, Mary Cherry looked like the spoiled, amoral wench that she was.

But during the 2000s, things changed. Designers who hadn't previously shown fur on the runway began showing it; designers who had previously shown some, showed more. Designers who had publicly pledged to abjure fur, like Giorgio Armani, went back on their word — as did a good number of those overexposed PETA "faces." (Naomi Campbell even went so far as to do an ad campaign for the furrier Dennis Basso.) Fur began to creep back into fashion magazine pages. 1990s grunge and minimalism gave way to 2000s bling and ostentation. And now, fur is back in a big way. This year's fall runways? Among the designers who showed fur and/or shearling were Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta, Prada, Rebecca Minkoff, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tom Ford, Vivienne Westwood, and Yves Saint Laurent.

This reversal is not merely the result of a cultural trend meeting its inevitable backlash. It's also a story of economics, and of the fur industry's quiet battle to rebrand its product as sustainable, natural, and luxurious.

Fashion is still a very top-down business. A fur coat in a designer's fall collection might retail for $10,000 and be ordered by a handful of stores; but that fur coat's value in visibility for fur as a whole helps sell thousands of $60 rabbit-trimmed Michael Kors hats and $400 coyote-trimmed men's jackets at Macy's. To help make fur a trend that pops up in magazine editorials and online, fur suppliers often sponsor designers, giving them free product to incorporate into their seasonal collections and even sending them on junkets. In 2010, the New York Times reported that one Scandinavian supplier, Saga Furs, gave fur to Cushnie et Ochs, Thakoon, Brian Reyes, Wayne, Derek Lam, Proenza Schouler and Richard Chai. It also paid for three designers to go on a junket:

Last summer, for example, the designers Alexander Wang and Haider Ackermann, plus Alexa Adams and Flora Gill of Ohne Titel were flown to Copenhagen for weeklong visits to the design studios of Saga Furs, a marketing company that represents 3,000 fur breeders in Finland and Norway. Saga Furs regularly sponsors such design junkets.

Another fur supplier, the North American Fur Auctions, gave furs that year to Bibhu Mohapatra and Prabal Gurung. "We want to make sure fur is on the pages of magazines around the world," said the NAFA's director of marketing at the time. "The way to do that is to facilitate the use of fur by designers."

Fur industry organizations sponsor design contests at top fashion schools, including Parsons and the Fashion Institute of Technology. (So does PETA, which enjoyed some institutional support at Parsons back when Tim Gunn was dean of its fashion school.) The prizes are often lavish, including free international travel and tens of thousands of dollars worth of product — perfect for a young designer who needs backing to launch a line. It's no accident that fur is increasingly present on the runways: the fur industry has spent years patiently working to re-legitimize and de-stigmatize its product in the eyes of a new generation of fashion tastemakers, and fur's current boom is the fruit of their labors. A 2007 ad campaign even called fur "the natural, responsible choice." Alice + Olivia designer Stacey Bendet, herself a vegan, wears fur and uses it in her collection. "It doesn't make sense," she once admitted. "Something about putting it inside me feels really barbaric. Something about wearing it just feels a little glamorous."

Established designers like Zac Posen now see no downside to collaborating with fur brands — c.f. Posen's collection for Pologeorgis. Even a series of minor scandals over fur labeling hasn't served to set back the industry.

Five years ago, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk said that only "old fogey designers like Karl Lagerfeld and so on" used fur, and that fashion's new generation just wasn't that into fur. Clearly, Newkirk was wrong.

In the past decade, fur has gone from being a kind of ethical third rail to just one point on the developing moral questionnaire of modern living. Maybe you care more about the environmental degradation, animal cruelty, and labor issues brought up by the leather tanning industry, or factory farms. Perhaps you think nothing of wearing vintage fur because to throw out a useful garment smacks of waste. Maybe you believe, like Silvia Fendi, that real fur is preferable to fake because, as she put it, "We did a collection of fake fur several years ago but found it is the most polluting thing for the environment." Perhaps you feel a little like Kelis, who concluded a long MySpace rant against PETA by weighing concern over animal welfare to concern for the human beings who toil in sweatshops and in the fields. "Underpaid minorities picking your vegetables, now that's fine for you right?" asked Kelis. "Don't waste my time trying to save the dang chipmunk!"

Whatever the case, fur is back in a big way. And it seems to be here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Well, this is strange. Lady Gaga performed during the Mugler show in Paris. Okay, that's not so strange, but this is: she rapped. Stranger still: she rapped in the persona of a man, with her voice distorted to sound male. And what did Lady Gaga rap about, you ask? Why, she took this opportunity to exhort an 86-year-old man to "suck" her "dick":

Ortenberg, you can suck my dick
Walk bitch, you ain't Lady Gaga
Nicopanda got style, trick
Cathy Horyn, your style ain't dick
Walk a mile in these foot-high heels
I run in these, you ain't runnin' shit
You chew beef, I wear meat
Then stay on top of the — I-I-I'm getting fat, and so is my bank.

You can hear the verse in question at around 1:15 in the show video above. Art Ortenberg is the former C.E.O. of Liz Claiborne and the longtime partner of the Times fashion critic Gaga also namedrops, Cathy Horyn. Ortenberg, Horyn, Gaga, and Oscar de la Renta have been embroiled in a weird, notionally food-related and stupidly complicated fight that has, until now, mostly played out in the pages of Women's Wear Daily. (It started when Oscar de la Renta misunderstood a line in Horyn's largely positive review of his spring collection and thought that the critic was comparing him to a hotdog. And then everything deteriorated from there.)

Now, a question: is this the lamest diss track ever released? Note the rhyme of "dick" with "dick" when considering your response. [YouTube]

• Anti-austerity protests that rocked France yesterday also disrupted the Paris Fashion Week schedule. Several shows were delayed as road closures made getting around the city difficult, including the John Galliano show, which started an hour late. [WWD]
• Notes Lynn Yaeger in her review of the day's shows, "Reports that people are eating out of garbage cans in Spain haunt the front page of the International Herald Tribune as models in the airiest of grunge-inspired creations stride the runway at Dries Van Noten." [The Cut]
• And in other important news, Anne Hathaway's wedding had a $100,000 floral budget, a custom Valentino dress, and a vegan menu. [Vogue UK]
• Gwyneth Paltrow is having Nicole Richie's House of Harlow 1960 fashion line do a limited-edition purse to sell on her site, GOOP. It'a a clutch that costs $225. [People]
• Ellen von Unwerth went to a party for Cindy Sherman hoping to talk to her about her work — but von Unwerth found she couldn't recognize the artist. "I don't know if she was there," said the fashion photographer. "You never know, it could be anybody next to you." [WWD]
• Model Irina Lazareanu is engaged. "His name's Keir Knight, and he's a contemporary dancer. The wedding is next August and we're doing it at Yoko [Ono]'s house, so that's going to be really cool," says Lazareanu. [The Cut]
• Carmen Dell'Orefice discusses starting off at American Vogue earning $7.50/hour as a model in 1946 in this interview. Day rates haven't actually improved much since then. [Vogue.it]
• Stefano Tonchi, the former editor of T and now editor of W, says that Deborah Needleman's appointment is a good move for the New York Times style magazine:

  "She's a solid replacement. There was obviously a little bit of space in between us. I've always liked Deborah. I've known her for many years. She knows that market. She knew how to do the Wall Street Journal and she knows the Times company. Her husband has worked there. She knows the situation that she's getting into."

  Did Tonchi just refer to Sally Singer as "a little bit of space"? Oof. [DFR]

• The Cut rounds up some of the potential candidates to replace Needleman at the helm of WSJ., including Anne Christensen, Jay Fielden, Alexandra Kotur, and Chris Knutsen. Tonchi, for the record, nominated Vanessa Friedman. [The Cut]
• Emmanuelle Alt says she has "not yet" had the chance to flip through CR Fashion Book, her old boss, Vogue Paris predecessor, and former best friend Carine Roitfeld's new magazine. "But I will." [DFR]
• Kate Spade New York is sponsoring the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund this year. Five emerging-designer finalists will get business mentoring from the company, and one winner will get an ad in Vogue paid for and produced by Kate Spade. [WWD]
• And now, a moment with designer Jenny Packham — and a pre-Internet concern-troll and likely home sewer from Wisconsin. Remember that time when Kate Middleton's dress blew up and revealed that she...has legs?

  "I had a little handwritten letter from a lady in Wisconsin passionately criticising me for the primrose yellow shift dress I made for the duchess," says Packham. "She said didn't I know about putting weights around the bottom of a hem, so it can't blow up?"

  The duchess wore the dress at an airport while touring north America, and the wind blowing up the runway revealed rather too much of the royal legs. "Well, I didn't know it was going to be worn on a windy runway," laughs Packham. "But I did think maybe in future I will put in more weighting, just in case…"

  Here's a less critical and more practical tip: if you're sewing and don't have any drapery weights on hand, you can put a heavyish, low-value coin (U.S. five-cent pieces are perfect) between two layers of organza and then sew the organza into the hem. [ES]

French fashion brand Zadig & Voltaire plans to open a hotel in a renovated building in Paris that was once a private mansion. But, says the founder and owner Thierry Gillier, when the hotel opens in 2014, "Chinese tourists" will not be welcome.

Gillier told the apparel industry trade paper Women's Wear Daily at the Zadig & Voltaire fashion show:

It will be a slightly private hotel, not open to everybody, with 40 rooms. We are going to select guests. It won't be open to Chinese tourists, for example. There is a lot of demand in Paris — many people are looking for quiet with a certain privacy.

So, that's a nice, bracing dose of racism and xenophobia!

When word of Gillier's quote started to spread through the fashion blogosphere and Twittersphere — not to mention on the Chinese social-networking site Weibo — this weekend, accompanied by harsh criticism, WWD went back and quietly edited its story. Gillier's quote is now given as, "...We are going to select guests. It won't be open to busloads of tourists, for example. There is a lot of demand in Paris — many people are looking for quiet hotels with a certain privacy." No explanation was given for the change, and WWD did not see fit to mention that the article had been edited, which makes the switch extra sneaky. Did WWD correct an inaccurate quote, or cave to pressure from a luxury brand that felt a little burned by the reaction to its original statement?

Writer Abe Sauer puts the incident in the context of expanding Chinese consumer spending, especially in the luxury-goods category, and attendant anxiety about those changes in the West:

Gillier is right about one thing — there is a lot of demand in Paris and a lot of that demand is coming from Chinese tourists. Last year, France received over over 900,000 Chinese tourists, making it Europe's most popular travel target for the Chinese. The country expects that by 2020 that number will reach nearly 4 million. Paris is the top spot for these tourists who are practically driving the luxury industry. It is estimated that Chinese tourists spent $72 billion on luxury goods last year, a staggering increase from $54 billion in 2010. [...]

This trend is here to stay. Financial service group CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets projects that by the end of the decade the Chinese will be the largest consumer group for luxury products, accounting for 44 percent of the world's total. This means the highest names in French luxury — from Louis Vuitton to, yes, Zadig & Voltaire — will have bottom lines propped up by China.

However you feel about the China's economic rise, slagging off your customers (or potential customers) is hardly a smart business model.

French Fashion Brand Sparks Social Media Firestorm With 'No Chinese' Rule [BrandChannel]

Mash up Hemingway and Cosmopolitan magazine and what do you get? McSweeney's has the answer:

And you silently tipped the ice-cube down his shirt. The ice-cube was cold. His body was hot. The cold ice-cube felt good inside his shirt. He didn't feel hot. The sun began to beat down on the man, and the shirt, and the ice. The ice-cube began to melt. It was not a bad feeling. It was a tingly feeling.

There's more at the link — James Joyce (who recommends "little lace underthings most scrumsy, and little black dress allwhimsy, for the dinner, the stately sloshingdinner date") and Nabokov (who's into sexting, it turns out) included.

FAMOUS WRITERS' COSMO TIPS [McSweeney's Internet Tendency]

Lena Dunham modeled for ASOS and looked pretty great doing it. In other Lena Dunham news, her first book of essays is reportedly the subject of a bidding war and will net her at least a $1 million advance. [Refinery29]

• Cathy Horyn, the New York Times fashion critic and a front-row fixture, was banned from the Yves Saint Laurent show. Women's Wear Daily first noted Horyn's absence, and the brand confirmed she had not been invited but declined to elaborate on the reasons why. (Fashion writers are in the unusual position of depending on the companies they cover for access.) Horyn, in her review of the collection, notes that lots of top editors were given worse-than-usual seats:

  many front-row editors, to their disgruntlement, were given second- and third-row seats, and some, including an editor from Le Monde, had to stand. While a lot of journalists don't really care where they sit, the lack of professional courtesy smacked of ignorance or arrogance.

  I was not invited. Despite positive reviews of his early YSL and Dior collections, as well as a profile, Mr. Slimane objected bitterly to a review I wrote in 2004 — not about him but Raf Simons. Essentially I wrote that without Mr. Simons's template of slim tailoring and street casting, there would not have been a Hedi Slimane — just as there would never have been a Raf Simons without Helmut Lang. Fashion develops a bit like a genetic line.

  Anyway, Mr. Slimane insisted that he was the first to show the skinny suit. It was a silly debate. Who cares? As time went on, he also felt (as best as I can tell) that I gave preference to Mr. Simons in my coverage of the men's shows. If I gave him attention, it was because his work and my reporting into the key early part of his career merited it. I haven't spoken to Mr. Slimane in five years.

  When I raised the invitation matter with his boss, Francois-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of PPR, which owns Saint Laurent, Mr. Pinault expressed dismay. "That's ridiculous," he said. "Journalists should be invited to shows." Quite so. But I suspected that Mr. Pinault was in a jam. Having given Mr. Slimane much authority to remake Saint Laurent, he could scarcely take it away from him.

  [On The Runway]

• James Franco, who's like Dave Franco's brother or something, shot an ad video for Stuart Weitzman starring Petra Nemcova. [The Cut]
• Stylist Stacey London's new memoir, The Truth About Style, tells the story of her life and career through her encounters with nine women with very different problems and relationships to fashion — including a breast cancer survivor, a fashion blogger, and a young woman entering the workforce. London says she likes her job because "I get to participate in the transformation of women. Not one person I know isn't concerned with their appearance. To trivialize fashion is to rob ourselves of a great tool." She also says that at age 43, "My life doesn't feel in front of me anymore." London lives alone and never married or had children. "I've had my head down, with blinders on. I have no idea what that person would look like if I found him. I want to sit with my cat and have my tea. I'm tired. But, you know, even though my cat is an amazing listener, I don't get a lot of feedback." [WWD]
• Melinda Farina, whom The Cut calls a "plastic surgery pimp," specializes in connecting the wealthy and the professionally beautiful with plastic surgeons and other medical professionals. Farina says, "I take care of supermodels, but much of that is nutrition, eating-disorder therapy, and corrective dentistry for eroding teeth. I have worked on the Trumps, Catherine Zeta-Jones, tons of tycoons, multiple royals. Surgeries at 1 a.m., back-door entrances, private nurses in hotel penthouses." [The Cut]
• Word is that Maybelline may be dropping Erin Wasson from its roster. Wasson has been a face of the brand since 2002. [P6]
• Alexander McQueen reported strong sales and growing profits for fiscal 2011. Operating profits grew to £5.15 million, up £3.86 million from the previous year. Sales rose by almost £8 million, to £40.67 million. The company credited, in part, Kate Middleton's wedding dress for the success. [Telegraph]
• Donna Karan was giving a speech at Harvard University when she decided to lead the audience in guided meditation. As you do. [WWD]
• The founder of the skincare line Aesop says he'd like to invent edible sunscreen — that is, a pill that you can take prior to sun exposure to prevent skin cancer, burns, and premature aging. [WSJ]
• Anyone checking the official Paris Fashion Week schedule yesterday online would have seen an unusual pop-up giving notice that the Hakaan show had been cancelled because the collection was lost. It turns out that the entire collection designed by London-based Hakaan Yildirim was lost by a courier company en route to Paris. Apparently the samples will be remade in time for showroom appointments, but not for the Paris show. [Telegraph]
• Korean male model Sung Jin Park says most of his friends from back home who are doing their compulsory military service "just want me to set them up with female models." And he's sick of it! "I told them, 'If you ask me one more time, I will block your number.'" [WWD]
• Lisa D'Amato, of America's Next Top Model fame, got married. [E!]

So. Céline showed some weird shoes for spring. Weird, furry shoes. Um, okay. What better way to combine the frumpiness of fluffy novelty bed slippers with the acute discomfort of 4" heels?

Bruno Mars, Rihanna, and Justin Bieber will perform at this year's Victoria's Secret fashion show. The show tapes in New York in November and airs nationally in December. Here, Bieber practices by wearing a pair of wings of his own at a concert. [VS]

• Sofia Vergara says her breasts "have opened doors for me." That's all? Our breasts have written letters of recommendation, put heavy things back on high shelves, and moonlighted briefly as chauffeurs, bringing in a solid second income. [Lucky]
• Four female Wal-Mart employees in Tennessee are suing the company for gender discrimination and have applied for class-action status in the state. This is the third regional discrimination suit brought against the company since the 2010 Supreme Court verdict that invalidated the class-action status of a nationwide gender-discrimination case. Additionally, more than 2000 Wal-Mart employees have since filed individual sex-discrimination claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. [WWD]
• Because apparently nothing else of any importance is happening today, some blogs are having a go at Jennifer Lopez for wearing a red dress to a Democratic political fund-raiser. Because only Republicans are allowed to wear red, apparently. [Fashionista]
• Gap is launching a new four-part program to improve safety standards at its supplier factories in Bangladesh, which has long been one of the most dangerous places in the world for garment workers. Factory fires are a particular issue. The plan includes a $2 million fund for workers who may be displaced from their jobs due to fire safety remediation. [WWD]
• "I get tired of things quickly," says Nicki Minaj. "I love change when it comes to my look … I need a new fix. It's like a high to me — every time I change my hair it's a high." That's funny; we thought every time she changed her hair, she was high. [People]
• After months of tension, Chris Burch has filed a lawsuit against his ex-wife, Tory Burch. Chris Burch, who until recently remained a board member at his ex-wife's company and who retains a significant shareholding, recently launched a new retail chain called C. Wonder that bears some similarities to the Tory Burch brand and product array. Tory Burch had been rumored to be mulling legal action against Chris. Instead, Chris is seeking a court declaration that Tory Burch cannot stop him from pursuing other business opportunities and damages for alleged interference with his business relationships. [WWD]
• In line with reports that holiday seasonal retail hiring will be stronger this year than last, Macy's says it plans to take on 80,000 additional seasonal workers, 2000 more than last year. [CNN]
• Alexa Chung is working on a book for publication next spring with Penguin. According to British Vogue, the tome will reveal "how she decides what to wear, her fashion influences and style tips." [Vogue UK]
• Ron Johnson, whose reign at J.C. Penney has most recently resulted in 22% year-on-year declines in same-store sales, says sales are "irrelevant if you're looking forward." Well, then. [WWD]
• Here's a nice, boring story about affiliate links in online fashion retail and social media. [NYTimes]
• Sonia Rykiel is now a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. [Vogue UK]
• And now, a moment with Vogue Italia editor Franca Sozzani. Franca, how do you feel about fashion right now?

  "I'm really tired of writing about fashion shows. Fashion weeks, long waiting times and then the reviews. Yes, I must admit that writing about clothes bores me."

  Sozzani goes on to pronounce elegance "the new avant-garde." [Vogue.it]

Tyra Banks Tweeted this photo of what she described as her "juicy muffintop." And thanks to Tyra Banks' selfless action, millions of women and girls around the world now feel better about their bodies. For good measure, the supermodel mogul included the hashtags #assmaintenance and #perfectisboring. (What is she, trying to shame perfect people now? Perfect-shaming? How are perfect Americans supposed to feel about that?) [@TyraBanks]

• Although critics were mostly lukewarm about Hedi Slimane's first women's wear show for Yves Saint Laurent — many said Slimane relied too heavily on the house's back catalog, and was too commercial — some buyers expressed excitement. [WWD]
• Michelle Obama just became the first person to wear Jason Wu's new lower-priced line, Miss Wu. [TDB]
• Kanye West reportedly went to Paris Fashion Week without Kim Kardashian because she hurts his fashion cred and he "wants to be taken seriously." [NYDN]
• Cynthia Rowley's spring collection includes bangles that double as flasks. Hallelujah! [Racked]
• Rumor has it that Deborah Needleman was in talks with the New York Times to take over T magazine before Sally Singer even left. Among Needleman's negotiating points: she wanted a separate publisher for the magazine (not one shared with the poorly performing New York Times Magazine) and a reduction from 15 issues per year to 12. It's not clear whether she got either, but the Times apparently did have to dip into discretionary funds to meet her salary request (a move that doubtless won't impress the union still in contract negotiations). Needleman started in her new job two days ago. [WWD]
• Agyness Deyn says marriage to Giovanni Ribisi is "so fucking cool! I love being a wife." The couple knew each other "for a while" but only began dating this spring and married within weeks. "But when you know, you know … He's fucking awesome." The model-turned-actor will not be converting to Scientology, she says. [ES]
• Carine Roitfeld threw a black-tie party to fête the launch of her M.A.C. collection. The former Vogue Paris editor says she's been wearing smoky eye makeup for 20 years. [WWD]
• Andrej Pejic is apparently making lots of money: "According to well-placed industry sources, Pejic could easily earn $50,000 for VIP billing at an international fashion event that involves multiple runway appearances," such as the Digital Fashion Week Singapore, which he just worked. In addition, the Australian male model nets five-figure appearance fees for parties. All of these figures are in Australian dollars. [Frockwriter]
• All Saints hired William Kim, a former senior vice president of Burberry, to be its new C.E.O. [Vogue UK]
• You guys, the Times just broke this amazing story about how sometimes models make jokes about themselves on Twitter and use the hashtag #modelproblems! [NYTimes]

Yves Saint Laurent's treatment of the press under new creative director Hedi Slimane has been perhaps the most talked-about event of this fashion season. It's a perfect case study in how not to do public relations — but it's also an illustration of the broader problems that dog fashion, a field of endeavor that is structured in such a way that reporters must depend on the luxury companies they cover for "access."

Yves Saint Laurent has been undergoing a reorganization, relocation, and rebranding under the direction of Slimane, the acclaimed men's wear designer turned photographer. The brand has flubbed virtually every opportunity to explain these changes to the media and the fashion buying public in an accurate and sympathetic way: the sudden announcement that the brand name would be changing to "Saint Laurent Paris" drew immediate flak on social media and snark in the fashion blogosphere, as did the news that Slimane was moving the company headquarters from Paris to Los Angeles. Subsequent announcements that the logo would remain YSL, but that the brand name would remain Yves Saint Laurent for accessories and beauty products, and, furthermore, the announcement that the women's collection itself would be officially named Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, only further confused matters. Then, at the label's Paris show, it attempted to set restrictions on what reporters could and could not write about, and even blacklisted several high-profile critics — the Times fashion writer Cathy Horyn among them — without any public explanation. And all hell broke loose.

Horyn, in her review of the YSL collection, mentioned that Slimane had banned her over a single line of copy in an obscure eight-year-old review of the Paris shows. Horyn partially credited designer Raf Simons with making possible the ultra-tailored look Slimane revolutionized and popularized in his then position at Dior Homme, and though Horyn also called Slimane's collection "one of the cornerstones" of that season, Slimane's disagreement with her characterization was strong enough to ensure that, all these years later, Horyn was not invited to his first outing at Yves Saint Laurent.

After Horyn's review was published, Slimane posted a bizarre and embittered "open letter" to the Times writer on his personal Twitter. He headlined the letter "My Own Times" — written in a Gothic, New York Times-esque font. The designer referred to Horyn dismissively as "Miss Cathy" and "Miss Horyn," and called her "a schoolyard bully" and an "average writer." Slimane also insulted her personal style and her journalistic objectivity, accusing her essentially of being in the tank for Simons, who is now the creative director of Christian Dior. (Simons and Slimane were rivals when they both designed men's wear.) Slimane called Horyn "a publicist in disguise" and concluded, "as far as I'm concerned, she will never get a seat at Saint Laurent but might get a 2 for 1 at Dior."

Horyn, when asked for comment by Women's Wear Daily, called the open letter, "just silly nonsense." Slimane responded overnight with yet another Twitter rant: "What is a ' silly nonsense ' to me is Catty Horyn [sic] still singing her tired bias [sic] tune for the nyt [sic]. This is an embarrassment for the newspaper." It went on.

Meanwhile, Horyn's colleague Eric Wilson, who was invited to YSL, was given a set of instructions by the house about how he could and could not report on it:

THE phone calls came late Monday morning, on the day of the Saint Laurent show. In turn, reporters and critics from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Style.com, WWD and other publications were each presented with what amounted to ground rules for covering the collection, which is highly unusual.

There would be no backstage access before the show, they were told. Afterward, they were welcome to talk to Mr. Slimane, but they were not allowed to ask him questions, or use anything he might say in their coverage.

The Times of London's Laura Craik wrote a kind of open letter of her own to Slimane in her review of the YSL collection:

I don't know if it was intentional, but you didn't make journalists feel very welcome at your show. Some, you didn't invite at all. Others had to stand, or were given seats so bad they could only see the top half of the models, which made it tricky to report on the clothes. Nobody minded sitting behind Azzedine Alaïa, but that all those glum-looking indie kids in black drainpipes got to see the clothes from the front row seemed a little insulting. I respect that you value your friends so highly, but I don't respect some of the people on the YSL payroll who were unnecessarily rude...You're Hedi Slimane. All the things you seem to love and value — music, fun, sexiness — require freedom. You have yours. I have mine. Without it, we are nothing. So please, don't ban me from your next show, because I really want to see it. We all do. We like you, even though you treat us like a bitch.

The Telegraph's Lisa Armstrong concluded her YSL review — one of the many that were lukewarm — with this line: "the man has taste. I would love to be able to watch his evolution at this house. Judging by his apparent fear of any kind of objective criticism, however, I fear I won't be allowed back."

It is unseemly for reporters to publicly gripe about seating assignments and invitations, and most do it only very unwillingly. To see so many high-profile writers going on record about their bad experiences front-of-house at the YSL show is virtually unprecedented. It may not seem this way to the general public, conditioned by reality television and celebrity magazines to think of fashion shows as some kind of exciting cross between a picnic with Ryan Lochte and a cocaine party with Kate Moss, but going to shows is not actually something most of us would do if it wasn't a matter of professional duty. Fashion week is mostly a series of long queues and much sunk time spent waiting to plead your case to people whose first, second, and third instincts are to regard you with great skepticism — like the D.M.V. but with more people dressed in event black. Fashion writers just want to go see the clothes; they are there in service of the interests of their readers, who sometimes buy clothes. Giving people a hard time at the door and playing favorites with the invitation list is just petty.

And that's not the only way YSL and Slimane have been fighting the press. Back during the brouhaha over the YSL name change, the blog the Business of Fashion, which specializes in the kind of detailed business reporting on the fashion industry that is time-consuming and expensive to produce, saw an opportunity for a story: just what was up with the changing of the brand name, what was YSL's rationale for it, how successfully had other companies negotiated similar changes, and what did experts think about YSL's strategy? The resulting piece, reported with extensive new information on background from YSL, clarified and explained the name change in a way that the company alone could (or would) not, and it was regarded as fairly definitive. It was widely picked up by other fashion news sources because it did what good reporting does: it identified questions of interest to a given group of people and set about finding answers to them. After that story was published, much of the criticism of the YSL/Saint Laurent Paris name change abated. One would think that YSL would be pleased. One would be wrong. Writes Business of Fashion editor Imran Amed:

[S]hortly after publication, we received yet another email from the company, this time from YSL's New York press office, asking us to revise our piece without specifying what they thought was incorrect. A follow up email from our team asking for clarification was met with silence.

Still apparently hung up on the name thing, YSL sent another email shortly thereafter to prep reporters on how to refer to Slimane's collection and the show, which Business of Fashion excerpted. It was apparently intended as a clarification:

"The House is referred to as ‘Yves Saint Laurent.' The ready-to-wear collection by Hedi Slimane is correctly referred to as ‘Saint Laurent'. (‘Saint Laurent Paris' is used in the logo but not when spoken/written about the collection). Collection credits, should you photograph any items, is [sic] correctly written ‘Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane.'"

Another mass email soon followed, saying that the previous email was "not for official use or for lifting quotes."

Oops.

YSL's P.R. team later contacted Business of Fashion to complain that a Tweet the site had sent had referred incorrectly to the company brand name. YSL demanded that the Tweet be "edited." (It is, of course, impossible to "edit" a Tweet after publication; Business of Fashion, perhaps eager to maintain the "relationship" even though the brand was being unreasonable, deleted it instead.) And then, YSL's P.R. team complained about a line in a column published on Business of Fashion by the fashion writer Colin McDowell, who was for many years the chief fashion critic at the Sunday Times. McDowell's sin in the eyes of YSL? He had written that not every single collection Slimane designed for Dior Homme was a thumping commercial success. The same is true of every designer. When Business of Fashion declined to change the line in question, YSL wrote back:

Don't correct, fare [sic] enough, we won't collaborate on any kind of project in the future.

That is exactly what it's like to report on fashion: first, you try to do your job. And then you get an angry email from someone who doesn't even know how to spell "fair."

Business of Fashion was not invited to the YSL show.

When you write about fashion, your ability to report on the industry accurately and with a timeliness that serves the interests of your readers is directly related to — even defined by — the quality of your "relationships" with various P.R. companies. You cannot buy a ticket to a fashion show in order to review it the way you could buy a copy of an album, were you a music critic, or buy a ticket to a movie, were you a film critic. You cannot walk into a fashion show the way you can an art opening. In fashion, P.R.'s determine your "access." And your access determines your ability to do your job. The luxury brands that dominate the industry hold all the cards: they have the money, they have the power, and — with the news media increasingly fragmented and no single venue holding anything like the impact it used to — they know they can bestow and revoke the promise of "access" among members of the press like a stern, withholding father deciding which child he loves the most.

There are doubtless other industries where vast pools of (mostly) privately held capital are concentrated in the hands of a few high-strung white men, making, in particular, accurate financial reporting very difficult and rendering the ability to write about what goes on dependent at least in part on one's willingness to glad-hand and trade favors. (Tech comes to mind, so does professional sports.) But some fashion brands seem to have particularly unrealistic expectations of the press — and, judging by their behavior and that of their P.R. teams, some serious misunderstandings about the press's very role in a free society. (Hint: it's not to write nice things about your company simply because you extended us the great privilege and favor that is a seat at your show.) I'm not sure if brands realize that to be a fashion writer is to be perpetually conscious of your own unusually abject position. Brands use their influence over reporters every day in ways big and small — from attempting to insist upon abstruse and clumsy wordings in final copy ("Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane"), to embargoing information, to playing favorites with exclusives and scoops, to withholding participation in stories altogether.

Whenever I am writing something about fashion — no matter how anodyne — and I find I must talk to somebody's press agent, I am inevitably asked if the story I'm working on will be "positive" or not. I never know how to respond: I tend to think of stories as merely true or untrue. I am, or at least I try very hard to be, a good-faith critic and reporter.

More than anything else, what YSL and Hedi Slimane's actions seem to betray is a fundamental insecurity about the quality of their work. What designer, artist, director, or musician who is confident in his or her gifts fears an honest, informed critic, or a reporter armed only with questions? Hedi Slimane should worry about doing good work. That's his job, and his responsibility to the global luxury conglomerate for which he works and its shareholders. And he should worry less about trying to prevent members of the press from doing theirs, so that we can meet our responsibilities to our readers.

U.K. online retailer ASOS has become the latest fashion brand to jump on the dubious "trend" for Native American-inspired clothing.

Recently, Paul Frank drew widespread ire with a Fashion's Night Out party it billed as a "Dream Catchin' Pow Wow" replete with signature cocktails and guests who were encouraged to wear "war paint." (The brand later apologized with remarkable sincerity and pledged to consider cultural sensitivity when planning events in the future.) Last year, Urban Outfitters offered 21 items for sale that it described as "Navajo" — but which were not made by or with the authorization of the Navajo people, which holds a variety of trademarks on the use of that term. Some Native Americans were particularly offended that Urban Outfitters had branded some insensitive items, including a drinking flask, as "Navajo." The Navajo Nation eventually began legal action against the chain. Forever 21 also has sold a variety of "Navajo" products.

ASOS' array of products it describes as Navajo and Aztec bears the cheerful tag-line, "They invented chewing gum and chocolate, but surely the Aztecs' greatest achievement was inspiring these fresh prints?" The retailer implores shoppers to "Go native with Aztec & Navajo prints."

Can't we all learn from Urban Outfitters' mistakes?

Go Native With Aztec & Navajo Prints [ASOS]

Carine Roitfeld has this to say about makeup: "I don't like it when makeup looks very try-too-hard. I like it when makeup looks like you have more important things to do than to look at yourself. Like you have other things to do than your makeup!" Roitfeld's collection for M.A.C. just launched, but she says her number-one piece of beauty advice is simple: wear sunscreen. [Fashionista]
Roitfeld also says that her apartment is messy. Really messy:

"One time, a burglar came to my apartment, so we called the police. My son was here, so I think they left before they tried to steal something. So the police come to the apartment and they say, 'Oh my god, did they steal everything?' I was like, 'No, it was like that!'"

[The Cut]

• New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan has weighed in on the "controversy" surrounding writer Cathy Horyn, who was publicly assailed for her coverage by two designers (Oscar de la Renta and Hedi Slimane) and one pop star (Lady Gaga) this season. De la Renta and Gaga's criticism of Horyn was based on a misunderstanding on a single word in one of her reviews; Slimane's was in the context of the house of Yves Saint Laurent's newly frosty and contentious relationship with the press. Sullivan writes that Horyn has the support of her editor, Stuart Emmrich, and concludes:

  Criticism, by its nature, cannot make its subjects happy at all times. And fashion designers are a temperamental lot. The combination is likely to result in a Parisian contretemps now and then — but not one that should change the critic's approach.

  [NYTimes]

• Elizabeth Olsen doesn't shop because, well, why shop when brands send you things for free:

  "I can't justify shopping because I'm like, ‘I got something like that for free, why would I spend money on it?' I tend to buy exactly what's already in my closet — I have an infinite amount [sic] of button-up shirts."

  [Grazia]

• The title of What Not To Wear stylist and author Stacy London's college thesis was "Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Broch, the Concept of Self and Its Relationships to the Creation of Character in Literature." Stacy, let's get coffee. [Racked]
• Tracee Ellis Ross launched a Web site, and it's kind of great. There are posts about the HBO Marina Abramovic documentary (the actress loved it), her feelings about her boobs, not wearing a bra, and body image, and a whole section devoted to her hair. [Official Site]
• Tom Ford just became a father: the designer and his partner Richard Buckley have welcomed a son named Alexander John Buckley Ford. [@CathyHorynNYT]
• Naomi Campbell's new reality modeling show The Face — which she co-hosts with Nigel Barker, Karolina Kurkova, and Coco Rocha — will have for its grand prize the opportunity to be the face of Ulta's holiday campaign in 2013. Campbell promises that the show will be infused with less back-stabbing and faux "drama" than its competitors, which must include Barker's old haunt, America's Next Top Model. [WWD]
• The activist shareholders hoping to secure four resignations from the board of troubled company Wet Seal have succeeded. Wet Seal has been struggling with steep declines in sales and a racial-discrimination lawsuit that may go class-action. [WWD]
• In Manhattan, only about 20 people bothered to line up for the launch of Anna Dello Russo's accessories collection for H&M. [Racked]
• Although he is a French national, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy head Bernard Arnault is set to receive an O.B.E. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Harper's Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey just became a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. [WWD]

As soon as Karl Lagerfeld showed those ridiculous(ly sublime) hula-hoop bags on the Chanel runway for spring, my colleague Dodai and I knew we had to make one. "It's not up to me to say it is chic," said the always-modest Chanel designer after the show. "I thought it was but I cannot say it myself." Well, Karl, we thought it was chic! So, we boned up: we studied runway photographs in extremely high resolution, talked a lot about lambskin, watched videos of the bag in motion, and tried our best to channel the spirit of Karl himself. Then we poured some gin, put on some Kraftwerk, and began our craft work.

My neighbor was like, WHAT IS THAT
I said, "It's a purse."

It is. It is. Carry it with pride.

If there's something you'd like to see as a DIY project, you know what to do. In the meantime, to check out past DIYs:

How To Give Yourself a Shabby-Chic Antique Manicure
How To Turn Your Dress Ideas Into Reality By Making A Custom Pattern
How To Embellish Any T-Shirt (With Designer Natalie Chanin!)
How To Make Surrealist Schiaparelli Sunglasses
How To Keep Any Strapless Dress From Falling Down
How To Master The Art Of Ombré Nails
How To Ditch Your Boring Throw Pillows For Something Cooler
How to Make Easy, Fast, Foolproof Bread From Scratch
You Too Can Have Kick-Ass Nails Like Rihanna
How to Make the World's Easiest Purse
How To Wrap The Best Gifts Without Breaking The Bank
How To Pluck Your Eyebrows
How To Winterize A Coat
How To Knit A Burberry-Inspired Cowl
How To Make A Colorful Wrapped Hair Comb
How To Transform Yourself With Special Effects Makeup
How To Give Yourself Paint-Splattered Jackson Pollock Nails
How To Turn A T-Shirt Into A Pillow
How To Make A Felted Soap
How To Make A Manicure Last
How To Make A Corinne Day-Inspired Spiderweb T-Shirt
How To Do A Polka-Dot Manicure
How To Do A 30s-Style Moon Manicure
How To Make An Envelope Clutch
How To Paint Your Nails With A Charming Leopard Print
How To Alter A Thrift-Store Dress

Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière — who more or less established the ultra-skinny "size zero" trend that predominated in high fashion in the early 2000s — would have you believe that the entire reason he started casting such extraordinarily skinny, young models was that he couldn't afford a fit model when he was designing clothes, so all his samples turned out too small:

"Yes, we did have a size issue. We started very skinny, it's true. Strangely, we didn't have fit models at all to ... begin with — just to give you an idea of the size of the company. So we did fittings on the girls at the studio and they were often quite petite. I had a tendency to think good cut and small size, but it should be a good cut in big sizes, too. That's what want I want to focus on — it's the cut, not the sizing, and if people see they can wear something in a big size, then I did my job."

Balenciaga couldn't afford a fit model, therefore the samples were too small, therefore Nicolas Ghesquière just had to hire 5'11" 14-year-olds with 33" hips. He had no choice, you see. Also, there was that one season where the whole collection shrank in the wash. Wasn't his fault, you guys! [Sunday Times via The Cut]

• Francois-Henri Pinault, the head of Yves Saint Laurent parent company PPR, says he is happy with the direction the brand has taken under new creative director Hedi Slimane. Slimane's first collection was met with lukewarm reviews — and lots of commentary about YSL's newly contentious relationship with the press, what with the brand banning certain critics and attempting to restrict writers' coverage. "I totally stand by the house of Yves Saint Laurent and the decisions made by its teams or its artistic director," says the French billionaire, "and I didn't appreciate that some people tried to use me by linking my name to chatter about invitations or the seating of this or that person." That is doubtless a reference to Cathy Horyn, the New York Times writer, who was one of those banned from the show. In her review, Horyn wrote that she had "raised the matter" of the banning with Pinault and that he sympathized with her position: "Mr. Pinault expressed dismay. 'That's ridiculous,' he said. 'Journalists should be invited to shows.' Quite so." [WWD]
• Meanwhile, this weekend Hedi Slimane quietly deleted all of the weirdly embittered Tweets he wrote about Horyn. Including that really embarrassing "open letter." [The Cut]
• 18-year-old Lily McMenamy, who had her runway debut at YSL, says that her mother, model Kristen McMenamy, helped her prepare:

  "My mom was here for fashion week, and I went to visit her in her hotel room one night before Saint Laurent and she gave me a catwalking lesson, which was super fun. For the first time ever, in my entire life. It's always been kind of a secret fantasy for me. Just in her lovely room at the Park Hyatt, walking back and forth…I put on some of her Prada stilettos. [Laughs] I watched playback of myself from the show and I thought I did alright — but I was so terrified, you have no idea."

  [Into The Gloss]

• The online discount retailer Beyond The Rack is adding a dedicated plus-size channel called My Curvy Closet. There is a $15.35 billion market for plus-size women's wear in the U.S. according to the latest data. [WWD]
• Kate Upton says she wouldn't turn down a role as a Bond girl, oh no. [Vogue UK]
• Nine West is revamping its store format to feature something called a World According To Pumps Wall — basically a giant wall of high, mid-height, and kitten heeled pumps in a dazzling array of colors and materials. [WWD]
• Mulberry has launched a Web site called Brilliant Britain, which the brand bills as a guide to all things British. Tim Walker, Alexandra Shulman, and Alain de Botton are among the contributors. [Telegraph]
• Yoox is launching a Chinese edition at Yoox.cn. Like the regular Yoox, Chinese Yoox will sell past-season clothing at a discount and some designer capsule collections. Unlike the regular Yoox, Chinese Yoox "will also feature special voice recognition technology enabling consumers to search for specific color schemes by telling the site preferred color choices in Chinese." [WWD]
• Also expanding in China is Jimmy Choo, which just acquired for an undisclosed sum its own Chinese business (which had formerly been managed by a distribution partner company). Jimmy Choo now operates 3 stores in China, with plans to open another four over the coming months. [WWD]
• Vogue Italia apparently dedicated one of its periodic 30-page spreads to Stella Tennant, her children Iris and Jasmine, her friends Colin and Isabella Cawdor, and their daughter Beatrice. Bruce Weber visited the six while they holidayed in the Scottish highlands and shot them doing usual holiday things, like playing with lambs (Tennant) and wearing flower crowns (the girls). Weber writes in the magazine that he "wanted to give both of you [Tennant and Isabella Cawdor] some photographs that you could look back on when your children have grown and you are having some tea while knitting your grandchildren gloves for the oncoming freezing winter." [WWD]
• Sisters Lizzie and Darlene Okpo named their fashion label William Okpo after their father, who came to the U.S. from Nigeria with $80 to his name in 1976. Darlene says:

  "All four of us siblings are really into style in different ways. My brother's room is full of shoes. It's kind of gross. But we blame it on our Dad. Every Saturday we would go food shopping and then we'd go to the mall. He would never buy anything for us, but always for himself. We would sit in the store for three hours and he would leave with one tie. He would analyze everything."

  [Fashionista]

Vice hung out with Girls actress Jemima Kirke in East Hampton, where she lives. Kirke spoke to the magazine about pregnancy, her career, and how she would feel if she had a daughter who dated a guy who behaved like Adam on the show.

First though, it turns out that the reporter actually first met Kirke a decade ago at a party when Kirke offered her cocaine:

VICE: I ran into you when you were 18 and back home for the holidays from the Rhode Island School of Design. It was at an afterparty for our friend's band Dopo Yume. From the moment I met you I've always seen you as this beautiful, glamorous —
Jemima Kirke: Wait, what happened at the afterparty? Now I want to know. Do you remember?

Well, I can tell you and it can be off the record if you want...
No, it's fine.

We were at Black and White, the bar, and obviously neither of us was old enough to be there. We were introduced by a mutual friend, hit it off, and then you asked me to go into the bathroom with you.
Oh yeah! I do remember that, and that you seemed somewhat impressionable at the time. So I thought, "I could probably get this girl to do drugs with me."

The reporter recalls, "You offered me bumps off your keys while you were peeing on the toilet."

Kirke says for her part that drugs no longer hold any allure: "That way of life stopped working for me really quickly. Some people know how to balance things, at least enough to be able to continue messing around, but I didn't. I was very all-or-nothing about it, and you burn out really quickly if you keep going that way. It really fucked me." Kirke earned her B.F.A. and three years ago married Michael Mosberg; she's currently eight months pregnant with the couple's second child.

Vice asked her to give dating advice to her unborn child. Kirke said, "If I have a boy, I'll probably just tell him to be nice to women." And if she has a daughter, will she in Vice's words "lock her up and not let her out"? Hardly: "I would love for her to date guys. I guess I'd just let her do her own thing and hopefully she'd feel comfortable enough to talk to me so I can offer advice." And if she dated someone like Adam on Girls, well, she'd be a little worried.

Kirke was talking some more about drugs — and how she still would have done them even had she grown up in the suburbs — when the interview was interrupted by the news of Lindsay Lohan's latest hit-and-run:

I don't think location would have mattered. I wasn't pissed at my parents, and I wasn't a brat, so I don't feel the city really changed me in that way. [pause] Oh, Lindsay [Lohan] strikes again! I'm reading the Post and she fucking hit a pedestrian again with her SUV.

Are you serious?
It was at 2:30 AM, too. That's not a good look.

She hasn't grown up yet.
No, she definitely hasn't, and I don't think she ever will.

One In The Oven [Vice]

For the first time ever, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York is now selling ads that entirely cover its MetroCard tickets. The ticket is an ad. Gap stepped up to buy an entire run of the cards new fun-size billboards, which were made blue and emblazoned with Gap logos. Aside from the shape and the black magnetic strip there is no outward indication that the cards are MetroCards — no MetroCard logo, no M.T.A. name, nothing. The blue cards also double as Gap coupons. The value of the Gap deal to the cash-strapped agency was not disclosed, but when the new ad space was announced, the MTA said the cost would be between $50,000-$5 million depending on the number of cards and the duration of the campaign. [NYTimes]

• Balenciaga is soliciting questions from the public for Kristen Stewart, who, in her capacity as brand ambassador for one of its perfumes, will (once all the questions about Rupert Sanders and oral sex have been screened out) answer them in a live-streamed interview. If you want to make some P.R. intern's life more interesting, you can submit a question or questions here. [Grazia]
• Barneys is closing its Dallas store. Although in May C.E.O. Mark Lee said the troubled retailer had no plans to shutter any stores, employees were given the news yesterday. No word on how many jobs will be lost. [WWD]
• MTV rounded up a list of more than 40 rap songs that have now been made obsolete by the Yves Saint Laurent brand name change to "Saint Laurent Paris." Or whatever the fuck it's called now. Surprisingly, only two of the songs are by Kanye West. [MTV Style]
• Ivanka Trump's favorite midnight snack food is Polly-O string cheese. [WWD]
• Behind-the-scenes paparazzi photos of the Dolce & Gabbana spring campaign — currently shooting in Taormina, Sicily, the site of the brand's July couture show — reveal that it features Monica Belluci and Bianca Balti. No word on which one gets to model the mammy earrings and dresses. [Fashionista]
• Model Lily Kwong says of studying at Columbia, "during my first week of classes in 2009 when a girl blew into my Contemporary Civilization class in head-to-toe Comme Des Garcons I remember thinking: ‘Ahhh, I landed at the right school!'" [Fashionista]
• Poppy Delevingne got engaged to her boyfriend James Cook. He proposed with a ring in a custom-made Anya Hindmarch box full of photos of the couple. [Telegraph]
• L'Oréal is denying it has any plans to sell the Body Shop chain after a Daily Mail article reported that the beauty brand was on the block, citing sources at competitor Lush cosmetics. [WWD]
• Jemma Kidd's beauty line has entered bankruptcy administration with debts of over £2 million. [Telegraph]
• Marni says it is looking for investment capital to fund the family-owned company's continued growth. Marni says it expects to realize revenue of $167.1 million this year, or a 10% increase over 2011. [WWD]

Chanel released a series of short teaser videos from its upcoming Brad Pitt Chanel No. 5 ads so that you can, I dunno, make them your ring tones or something. Pitt's endorsement of the brand cost Chanel a reported $7 million, so no doubt the company intends to milk it as long and hard as possible; hence the weird ad prequels. Over a still frame of the actor, his shaggy head turned away from the camera as if in shame, Pitt's voice intones, "Do you feel lucky?" Four-second pause. "Why?"

Not particularly lucky, Brad Pitt. I mean, am I supposed to? Why are you asking me this? Is this a test? Will my response unlock the secret to whether I'm an optimist or a pessimist or some other kind of -ist? Are you actually giving me a Myers-Briggs? Cause I think I already took that one and I got ENTJ. I mean, sometimes I feel lucky but mostly I just feel anxious about whether I should feel lucky, you know? Why? Why? How the hell should I know?

"What's the mystery?"

Oh, Brad Pitt. Have you never been to the Mystery Spot? It's really fun. But it might make you feel dizzy. You and Angie should take the kids there sometime.

"Are you going somewhere?" Three-second pause. "Where?"

Yes, Brad Pitt, I'm going to the kitchen. Probably to get a bagel and pick at my big toenail.

Victoria's Secret wants you to work out in a push-up halter it calls the "Showtime Sport Bra." As bras go, this one is long on the "show" and short on the "sport." It has underwire and "push-up padding for lift & cleavage." VS grades it only "medium support." Sounds comfortable! Someone give this to Amanda Bynes. Never forget that as a woman it is your duty to look sexy and club-ready with boobs hiked firmly up to your chin at all times — even when sweating on the elliptical machine or the bench press. [Racked]

• Jennifer Lawrence nabbed a fashion campaign. She will be the next face of Miss Dior handbags, a role previously filled by Mila Kunis. [WWD]
• Balenciaga's little experiment in crowd-sourced questions for Kristen Stewart has one amusing effect: even the rejected fan-submitted questions are publicly visible, meaning people can see a) exactly how sanitized Stewart and Balenciaga's peeps are making the proceedings and b) that people really, really want to ask the actress stuff about "Krisbians" (straight women who would "go gay" for her) and:

  How many volts is Rob's power tool?

  [Fashionista]

• The blue gingham dress that Judy Garland famously wore in The Wizard of Oz is up for auction, where it is expected to fetch $500,000. [Guardian]
• Designer Alfred Fiandaca says he loves that Ann Romney wears clothes he designed years ago — like her pink debate suit, which is from 2006. "She's secure enough to wear something she likes, no matter how old it is," says Fiandaca. "That's always been my fashion philosophy: if a man can wear a suit for seven to 10 years, why can't a woman?" [WWD]
• Jourdan Dunn will be the host of an online cooking show called Dunn with Jourdan Dunn. The show will be released on Jay-Z's YouTube channel. [Telegraph]
• Neiman Marcus released its annual holiday catalog, which always features headline-grabbing fantasy gifts (that are rarely, in fact, ever sold). This year's include: his-'n'-hers diamond watches by Van Cleef and Arpels ($1.09 million), a dinner and tequila tasting for 10 cooked by Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Jerome Bocuse, and Richard Rosendale ($250,000), and a jet pack ($99,500). [WWD]
• Turns out Lady Gaga wore some clothes from Hedi Slimane's Saint Laurent (Or Whatever The Fuck It's Called) spring collection to go visit Julian Assange in his hidey-hole at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. [Fashionista]
• Candie's is launching a beauty line including nail polish, lip gloss, and perfume this November with Kohl's. [WWD]
• L'Uomo Vogue themed its October issue around China — and it proved to be a big success with advertisers, with a 104% increase in ad pages over the October, 2011, issue. [WWD]
• Alexa Chung says the book she's writing will be a little bit in the vein of Rookie, which recently released its first book:

  "It's basically a compendium of drawings, photographs and I'm going to write about a bunch of stuff. It's not like a "style bible", which I keep reading it being reported as. It's more like just imagery I find interesting and it's going to have a sense of humor and I guess more into the things that Rookie has done. I don't really know yet. I haven't written it yet."

  [Fashionista]

• The 99 Cent Store is looking for a location on ritzy Rodeo Drive. It is also looking for publicity: the chain took the unusual step of making a press release about this development. [WWD]
• Puma says it is ramping up its commitment to sustainable manufacturing practices. In addition to accounting "for the costs of its air pollution, greenhouse gases, waste, land and water use" in its manufacturing, it is introducing biodegradable and recyclable products, including sneakers and apparel. After the garments have worn out, they can be returned to Puma stores for recycling. [Reuters]
• Target has opened the first in a new chain of stores under the C9 Active Apparel name. This store is in San Francisco, and the chain will sell active wear from the Champion brand, which Target owns. [WWD]
• True Religion is for sale. Anyone wanna buy True Religion? [WWD]