Madonna To Expand Clothing Line, Try Her Hand At Lingerie

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  • Madonna went to Macy’s yesterday with Lourdes and her “muse” Taylor Momsen to launch her Material Girl juniors’ line. But that’s just the start of Madge’s licensing deal: Expect separately branded, grown-up geared lingerie and workout clothes next. [WWD]
  • George Clooney might be among the front-row guests at the Armani show in Milan. [WWD]
  • Tyra Banks has a teeny, tiny pimple. [@tyrabanks]
  • A 42.35 ct diamond necklace worn by Princess Diana shortly before her death is set to be auctioned. The jewels, and their matching earrings, are expected to fetch between $1.5 and $2.5 million. [CBS]
  • In other news relating to auctions of jewelry that once belonged to now-dead women who were never the Queen of England: Wallis Simpson‘s jewels are going on a world tour before Sotheby’s puts them under the hammer. [Omg!]
  • Naomi Campbell: “We’re the original crew. We’ve still got it. My best moments over the 25 years have been with Kate, Claudia, the original girls. And boy did we have so much fun. We’re still running things, we’re still doing it.” [Mirror]
  • Kate Moss: “I’ve got good friends, they give me a bit of a slap. They say ‘Stop being a diva!’ And then — Slap.” [Sun]
  • Just yesterday, Amy Lemons talked about how when she entered the modeling industry, at age 13, her agents advised her to eat one rice cake a day — or half a rice cake, if a whole rice cake “didn’t work.” Mario Testino, however, seems to think this is entirely natural. “I think the world has greater problems than anorexia,” the photographer explained at the opening of his exhibition in Madrid. “Fashion uses young models, it always has, and of course they’re skinny. I was skinny too at their age.” [WWD]
  • UK chain Debenhams, which claims not to use airbrushing for its ads and has featured a disabled model in past campaigns, cast models in their 40s, 50s and 60s in its latest campaign. [MW]
  • Tim Gunn uploaded a sharply-worded video recap of last week’s Project Runway episode (the Jackie O. one) to his Facebook, as part of his ongoing video diary series. Gunn criticized the producers and the judges and explained how, in his opinion, the challenge had been ill-conceived and mis-managed by producers at various stages — although he stated that he agreed with the outcome and the judges’ decisions. The video, which is still viewable here, was removed from Gunn’s Facebook shortly thereafter. [Vulture]
  • For his part, Gunn says the decision to take it down was his, and not Lifetime‘s. “There was a hurtful reaction to a couple of things I said, and that really concerned me,” Gunn said. “That was never my intention. I thought, ‘Let me just take this down.'” [NYPost]
  • Tell us how you became a great designer, O wise Roberto Cavalli: “The strength of my fashion has been to distinguish right from wrong, ugly from attractive, good from bad — that’s how I became a great designer.” [WWD]
  • Last season, Milan fashion week was crammed into just four days, resulting in a jam-packed schedule that made the critics all cranky. This season, even though Milan has six luxurious days in which to stage its shows, the Italian Chamber of Fashion decided to cut a dozen shows from the official schedule, just to be on the safe side. Among those de-listed? A beachwear brand, a few younger, lesser-known designers…and the plus-size label Elena Mirò. [WWD]
  • Mirò, which has opened Milan fashion week for the past five years, staged a show anyway. [HuffPo]
  • Critics were unmoved by Christopher Bailey‘s spring collection for Burberry. The celeb-packed front row, the models contending with difficult shoes (one, Nina Porter, fell) and the fact that the rock-star-motorcyclist “look” is kind of fading all present themselves as potential sources of distraction, but interestingly, Cathy Horyn seems to blame the dull collection on the fact that Burberry — unlike a lot of its competitors — has made so much of the web. The show was live-streamed online worldwide, and some items from the collection were offered for immediate sale, to be delivered in seven weeks’ time (Burberry did this last season, too, and nobody seemed to think it was cramping Bailey’s artistic vision then). Yet: “This was not Christopher Bailey’s best collection,” Horyn writes. “Indeed, the many leather jackets and coats — plain, studded and in gold snakeskin with stretch pants and skimpy dresses — seemed primed for Web sales; much of the collection was to be offered for immediate sale and delivered in about two months. Hence a style that was seasonless rather than overtly spring…When I think of all the great collections that Mr. Bailey has done for Burberry, they’ve all been characterized by a sense of emotion that he was willing to put out there. It wasn’t all crass e-commerce.” [On The Runway]
  • Suzy Menkes, for her part, felt that the stumbling models recalled the tipsy WAGs that Burberry has struggled to distance itself from. “The impact of ultratight motorbike pants with the badly balanced footwear was to turn high quality, beautifully made clothes, often in snake skin or leather, into just the image that Burberry has fought to escape: outfits for Britain’s shop-until-you-drop WAGS, the tabloid nickname for the wives and girlfriends of soccer stars. Since the escapades of the WAGS include falling off their shoes after a few too many glasses of Cristal Champagne, some of the show images are going to look like gossip magazine covers.” [IHT]
  • In a move almost as laughable as it is idiotic, Bottega Veneta has decided to live-stream its spring show on its website this Saturday — but to make the stream invitation-only. Against all evidence, so many people in fashion are still hoping the Internet will, in the words of Mark Greif, blow over. [WWD]
  • Cathy Horyn also thinks the eagerness of many young designers to embrace systems of corporate patronage — sponsorships, sponsored prizes, and other partnerships — may be limiting the creativity of London fashion week in general. [NYTimes]
  • London fashion week blind items: “WHICH tarnished fashion golden boy was flown to London specifically to host a party, which he only attended for exactly seven minutes?” Could that be, gee, our friend Derek Blasberg? More at the link. [Fashionologie]
  • Liam McMullan, son of the New York society photographer Patrick, has started helping out his dad — especially now that three of his assistants have started their own competing business. [P6]
  • Desigual got 100 New Yorkers to line up outside its Lower Manhattan store in their underwear, then gave them two free items of clothing each. [WWD]
  • Guccio Gucci was on his way to speak to Congress about the costs of the trade in counterfeit designer goods, and he’d brought along “over $50,000 worth of vintage Gucci bags — one made by his grandfather for his mother — custom-made clothing and hundreds of family photos that were going to be used in an upcoming documentary on his life,” when US Airways lost his luggage. [P6]
  • We got excited when we heard designer Rad Hourani was working on a line of shoes with Aldo — we like a little of Rad’s sharp, black-and-white, unisex, futuristic vision in our lives — but are disappointed to learn the kicks are going to cost $390-$500. [Refinery29]
  • Yeohlee Teng opened a boutique in the Garment District of New York, where her clothes are designed and made. Teng wanted, she says, “to bring the design process from the locked showrooms of the district down to the street.” [NYTimes]
  • J. Crew opened its second standalone men’s wear store, in Boston. [WWD]
  • The Sunsilk brand is being discontinued in the U.S. It will still be available overseas. [BellaSugar]
  • Evian’s latest “designer bottle” collaboration is with Issey Miyake. [TLF]
  • Terry Richardson is in therapy. [Terry’s Diary]
  • The Situation‘s latest shirt includes a plastic ab-window. [The Situationshirt]
 
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