- Judging from this ad, Avril Lavigne‘s perfume, Forbidden Rose, smells like eyeliner, cast iron, a decaying forest in winter, and an incongruous hair-bow like the ones your mother used to make you wear for family pictures. [TLF]
- Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen want to dress Michelle Obama. [Harper’s Bazaar]
- The trailer for Dolce & Gabbana‘s feature film (yes, Dolce & Gabbana has a feature film), Quando, Quando, Quando, features Monica Bellucci walking around Rome in a black lace dress. (T can’t identify the actress from the clip, but she was papp’d while filming.) [T]
- Dominican model Arlenis Sosa, in a blonde Marilyn wig, nabbed the cover of Deutsch magazine. [TLF]
- Naomi Campbell‘s former agent, Carol White, was cross-examined by Charles Taylor‘s defense lawyers about Facebook posts she and her friends made about the trial and Campbell’s testimony. Pictures of White drinking wine with friends were also posted to Facebook under the title, “Blood Diamond Night.” White contradicted Campbell’s recollections of the night in 1997 when Charles Taylor apparently sent her a gift of several uncut blood diamonds from Sierra Leone; whereas Campbell said on the stand that she didn’t know where the gems came from, White testified that Campbell and Taylor had communicated at an earlier dinner and that Taylor had indicated he wanted to send her diamonds as a gift. [P6]
- The University of Texas at Austin is trying to raise $30,000 to restore five of Vivien Leigh‘s dresses from Gone With The Wind in time for an exhibition set to mark the film’s 75th anniversary in 2014. Including the green curtain dress. [ABC]
- Marc Jacobs explains his extraordinary self-transformation from bespectacled, talented fashion nerd, to tanned, contacts-wearing gym bunny, to Calvin Klein in Harper’s Bazaar: “I had 21 percent body fat four years ago. I was in and out of the hospital because I had flare-ups of ulcerative colitis. I’d be in the office for 16 hours a day, six of which were in the bathroom because I was so ill. I ate nothing but junk food. Basically, the doctor said, ‘We’re going to have to remove your colon.’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing that!'” So Jacobs went to a nutritionist to see if changing his diet could alleviate the colitis. “He said no caffeine, no sugar, no white flour, no dairy from a cow, take açaí every morning, goji, noni, mangosteen, et cetera, omega-3, wheatgrass shots with ginger. The list is endless.” The nutritionist also prescribed exercise. “I hadn’t stepped foot in a gym. Well, I hadn’t walked a block in 20 years.” But he worked out every day. “When I started to feel better, and when my stomach wasn’t hurting, and when I wasn’t on the toilet all day, and when I could look at myself in the mirror, and when I went from 21 percent body fat to 5 percent body fat and I had muscle, I was like, This is great! When guys started looking at me and asking me out on dates, I felt way better about myself.” [Harper’s Bazaar]
- Mango‘s JC Penney line, MNG by Mango, launches in JC Penney stores next Wednesday. The Spanish fast-fashion chain will ship new stock every two weeks. [WWD]
- The very pregnant Nina Garcia is so over your studded accessories: “I have seen everything possible covered in studs and grommets. Also, what I call angry shoes: those platforms with the multiple buckles and studs. I think the polished girl is back.” [The Cut]
- Joe Zee of Elle magazine has signed on to host a new show for the Sundance Channel called “All On The Line.” He will mentor one designer through a crisis per episode. [WWD]
- The recent vogue for hats has left a generation of young men — raised without a hat role model in the home — sadly untutored on the rules of hat etiquette. The Emily Post Institute spokesperson says, by the way, that if a man wants to keep his hat on indoors at a bar or a nightclub, “I’d be cool with that.” [WSJ]
- Stefano Tonchi says he never really read W before he took it over — he just looked at the pictures. We have to concur; most of W was like a less timely, dumbed-down Women’s Wear Daily bookended with that horrid “Countess” column. Understandably, Tonchi is ramping up W‘s written content, starting, obviously, with the September issue, the first entirely produced under his editorship. [The Cut]
- Content for September will include: a personal essay about young women who get plastic surgery; a profile of Givenchy‘s artistic director, Riccardo Tisci, and his muses; “an Ed Hopper–inspired fashion story shot in Red Hook, Brooklyn”; some new, unpublished pictures of the late artist Louise Bourgeois; and a two-page spread devoted to model Lindsay Wixson‘s lips in extreme close-up. [Fashionista]
- Comme des Garçons is opening a six-story store and exhibition space in Seoul. It will feature an installation by David Lynch. [WWD]
- Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders is a man of modest ambitions: “The focus now is how to expand — not to rule the world or make tons of money — but to make a bigger business, a more sustainable business. You’re looking at scale. I do a lot of work here, create a lot of product and you want to sell it more places, because it makes it sort of worth it and more interesting. You test: does this have legs? I don’t want to be the Gap or even Ralph Lauren.” [BoF]
- Diesel: Still being stupid. [Copyranter]
- Copenhagen fashion week — home to designers including Malene Birger and Peter Jensen — starts today. [Vogue UK]