Jane Birkin says she doesn’t mind that Hermès has made a mint off the luxury handbag that bears her name. “I got Hermès to fork out for my charities once I saw the fortune they were making,” explains the singer and actor. “A certain amount of money every year goes straight to my charity and it will continue to after my death. This year I was able to [use some of that money] to go to Japan for a benefit concert after the earthquake. We use some of the money to feed the poor people who can’t afford to eat in France. I sold one of my Birkin bags for $163,000 to help the Japanese Red Cross. So that rather trivial piece of heavy luggage has done a lot of good in the world.” As we all know, Jane Birkin prefers to use her Birkin as a pillow, a cat bed, and an occasional pet carrier. How cool is Jane Birkin? Still cooler than just about anyone else on earth, in case you were wondering. [WWD]
Karolina Kurkova is on the very bright new cover of French Elle. [DS]
Karlie Kloss, on the photo Vogue Italia unpublished from its website: “To be honest, I don’t know why they pulled it off. I thought it was a beautiful photo. We did a lot of photos that day, and working with Steven [Meisel], working with Pat [McGrath], working with Oribe and Carlyne [Cerf de Dudzeele] — we were creating art.” [Styleite]
The Cut points out that Chanel‘s recent pre-fall show — called “Paris-Bombay,” even though Karl Lagerfeld has never been to India — featured 7 models of South Asian descent, including Ashika Pratt from New Zealand, the Australian Shanina Shaik, the Swede Kelly Gale, and Smita Lasrado, Lakshmi Menon, Jyothsna Chakravarthy, and Alyssah Ali of India. The Cut doesn’t seem to have counted New Jersey-raised Liza Golden, who told Models.com that she has Indian heritage. We just whipped up a quick analysis of the Style.com slideshow: turns out that of the 72 women’s wear looks in the show, 11 were given to models of South Asian heritage. There was only one black model, Jasmine Tookes, and there were no non-white Latinas in the show, and there was only one model of other racial heritage: Yasmin Le Bon (née Yasmin Parvaneh), who is of Iranian heritage. Twelve out of 72 runway spots going to non-white girls is still just 17%, but it’s great to see South Asian models getting more work. [The Cut]
Fashionista analyzed the 2011 covers of all 18 international editions of Vogue and found that Mario Testino shot 15 covers (Steven Meisel shot 12 original covers and 3 reprints), Gucci as a brand got the most cover credits, the median age of all the Vogues’ cover subjects was 26, and eight of the covers were of Gisele Bündchen. Just 22% of covers featured a non-white person, and, notes Fashionista, “about half of Vogue’s 18 editions failed to feature any non-white cover subjects at all.” That low level of racial diversity mirrors what we saw on the New York runways last season. [Fashionista]
Speaking of Vogue covers, Anna Wintour and Hamish Bowles are going on CBS Sunday Morning to promote American Vogue‘s new online archive of all of its previously published content, articles, editorials, and covers. Wintour says that when she selected a shot of model Michaela Bercu wearing jeans for her first cover, “the printers called us up because they thought we’d made a mistake. Just wanting to check that that actually was the cover.” [WWD]
- That Vogue archive is live today, by the way. We’ll let you know how we feel about it just as soon as we cough up our $1,575 annual subscription fee. Interestingly, Vogue worked on the site with the trend forecasting agency WGSN; the URL is vogue.wgsn.com and when Styleite inquired about a corporate subscription, they were told someone from WGSN would be getting in touch — suggesting that WGSN is handling the billing. [Vogue Archive]
- Thom Browne‘s friends don’t get the deal with his super-short suit pants, either. After his early collections were kinda panned, says the designer, “I had really good friends saying, ‘Why would I want to wear it, when it doesn’t even seem like it’s fitting you?’” [WWD]
- Coco Rocha gave a speech in which she drew attention, again, to the issue of eating disorders among models. She shared an anecdote about how when she was 15, an agent told her, “The look this year is anorexic. We don’t want you to be anorexic, just look it.” Rocha says she finds this message, and fashion’s continued preference for a body type that even some models find it difficult to maintain via healthy means, “troubling.” This remark, about an agent wanting models who “look anorexic,” has been widely repeated as though it were somehow shocking — fashion and anorexia, in the same sentence? Including by some of the very same outlets that initially reported on a similar 2008 event, where Rocha first shared the story. Then, she said that when she weighed 108 pounds, she was told “you need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexic. We don’t want you to be anorexic, we just want you to look it.” And it seems that from 2008 to 2011, the attention paid to eating disorders in fashion hasn’t reduced their incidence. Imagine that! [The Cut, The Cut]
- Delightful indie label Vena Cava, which has been experiencing financial trouble, is reportedly selling off its office furniture. Which doesn’t sound good. But its also said to be “in talks” with potential backers. [DFR]
- Are these the 11 Most Unforgettable Dresses Of 2011? Maybe. Who really knows? It’s not like you can say something like that with any objectivity. [Forbes]
- Expect shopping malls to grow increasingly desolate as specialty chains slash their store counts in the coming years. Gap, Coldwater Creek, Christopher & Banks, Talbots, Pacific Sunwear, and Abercrombie & Fitch are among the chains that are planning to downsize by 10-25% in the near future; the reasons are the shitty economy and the fact that more consumers are shopping online. [WWD]
- Model Kati Nescher debuted at the spring shows at age 27 — which in fashion is almost unheard of. She previously worked as a German-Russian translator and has a two-year-old son. She likes to read. “I recently finished with the classic, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. Currently, I’m reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It’s kind of a really special book in Russia because it was really not available for the Russian people to read at the time of the twenties and thirties, and so it’s interesting to read about that time.” [The Cut]
- Lorenzo Martone, the man who very nearly married Marc Jacobs but then didn’t, is closing the modeling agency for models who wanted to do things besides modeling, Arc NY, that he ran with business partner Ryan Brown. [WWD]
- Franca Sozzani says manages to run Vogue Italia without ever holding meetings. Never. [Telegraph]
- Harry Winston swung to a $4.7 million loss during the quarter just ended. [WWD]
- Next month, Women’s Wear Daily is introducing a new column called ChinaFile, written by Beijing-based journalist Huang Hung. Should be interesting. [WWD]
- And now, a moment with Daphne Guinness. Daphne, what do you think about men wearing makeup?
- “I think we need more makeup for men. Until the 1820s, men wore makeup, and then they stopped.”
- [Fashionista]
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