Taylor Swift And Blake Lively Are The Worst Ladymag Cover Stars

Latest
  • Worst-selling, that is. Swift‘s April Elle issue sold the fewest copies of the year, and her covers of Glamour and Marie Claire were nearly as bad. Blake Lively bombed on Vogue and Esquire, but weirdly sold well for Allure. [WWD]
  • The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, having decided that what breast cancer really needs is a pink perfume, is launching one. 13.5% of sales will go to the foundation, meaning that if you want to donate to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, buying a pink perfume is a ludicrously inefficient means of doing so. [WWD]
  • What Not To Wear opinionator Clinton Kelly told Joy Behar he was not thrilled when he learned that Sarah Palin would be doing an “eight-hour info-commercial on my network.” [PopEater]
  • Retail stocks rose 23.5% during the year 2010. The highs of the year just ended approached the levels glimpsed in 2007, the Last Good Year for Retail. [WWD]
  • We already knew that 2010’s holiday spending at brick-and-mortar stores equaled 2007’s numbers for the first time, but now it’s been reported that online holiday spending grew by 12.6%, year-on-year, to some $30.8 billion. [WWD]
  • Coach, Forever 21, Target and Amazon were among the season’s big retail winners, according to analysts. Also, department stores like Macy’s and Neiman Marcus were buoyed by their exclusive designer partnerships and overall positive trends on Wall Street. Wal-Mart, J. Crew, and Hot Topic didn’t do so well — and neither did Talbots, despite a fancy new ad campaign and an attempt to jazz up its designs. [WWD]
  • Apparently, designer Roland Mouret gets asked all the time if he’s the secret designer behind Victoria Beckham‘s super-expensive fashion line. “And I’m like, why? Why would I want to design a collection for Victoria Beckham? Yes she is a friend and yes she asks for advice and yes I told her the name of a pattern cutter, but she has lots of friends she asks for advice — Marc Jacobs. I like to help people, that’s all.” [Contactmusic]
  • Lagardère, the French parent company that owns all foreign editions of Elle, is going to sell off its overseas divisions. In the running to take control of U.S. Elle are Hearst — which has long been rumored to be looking to buy Elle, something both parties always officially denied — Meredith Corp. and Bauer Publications. [WWD]
  • Ryan Seacrest stopped by Saks Fifth Avenue to buy a fedora and a dress for a friend. [P6]
  • Bryce Dallas Howard is the spring face of Kate Spade. It is the first time in its 18-year history that the brand has used a celebrity in its campaigns. [WWD]
  • Debutantes, those strange creatures in white dresses that cost more than a house downpayment, took over the Waldorf-Astoria hotel for a ball this weekend. The M.C. bragged about how one of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, and everyone stole everyone else’s booze. The debs’ dates were culled from the ranks of West Point cadets, one of whom told a reporter, “I’ve never been to the Waldorf before. It’s nice. My dad’s a cop.…I never thought I’d be doing something like this.” [WWD]
  • Luis Venegas, the editor of Candy, and Andrès Borque did an editorial for the magazine where Venagas impersonates Anna Wintour and Borque does his best Grace Coddington. There’s also a drag Tavi Gevinson and a drag Franca Sozzani It is amazing. [Frockwriter]
  • In the Queen‘s New Year Honors List, designer Katherine Hamnett was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Alice Temperley was named an MBE. Hamnett said “I tend to pooh-pooh these kinds of things,” but that being honored was very nice. “I’m respectable at last!” [WWD]
  • If you should happen to be in Paris this spring, check out the show “The Idealized History of Fashion, Vol. 2” at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. It features post-1990 works by designers including Martin Margiela, Rei Kawakubo, Helmut Lang, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Nicolas Ghesquière, and Alber Elbaz. [NYTimes]
  • Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy decided against selling under-performing brand Kenzo, but it will instead fire its C.E.O. James Greenfield. Set to replace Greenfield is Eric Marechalle, who formerly headed up the children’s wear division of a company whose licenses included Kenzo Kids, Junior Gaultier, and Little Marc Jacobs. [WWD]
  • Stylist Nicola Formichetti rates that plus-size V swimwear editorial and everything he ever did with Lady Gaga as among his favorite jobs of 2010. [Nicola Formichetti’s Blog]
  • Tom Ford released the video of his women’s wear show last September — the one that featured Beyoncé and Julianne Moore and Lauren Hutton. Set to one of Karen Elson‘s songs and interspersed with very carefully selected backstage footage, it plays exactly like the 3:17 luxury ad one would expect. [YouTube]
  • A few words on Daphne Guinness‘s footwear, from the Times: “She is typically shod in footgear whose platform soles are so high that they defy both the precepts of feminism and the laws of gravity (and the latter not always successfully; she has been known to tumble from the heights of her specially made Christian Louboutins). Venetian courtesans teetering on 17th-century wooden chopines had nothing on Ms. Guinness, whose progress to the women’s room from the dinner table at one charity dinner last fall kept a room full of guests in bated-breath suspense.” A few words from Guinness herself — and don’t call her an eccentric: “I truly hate the word. I’m actually very grounded. Also, eccentrics are almost asexual, and that is not something you can say of me, by any means…When I was a child, I was overly serious and thoughtful, a real tomboy, always dressing up as a knight or a pirate or a red Indian. If there is anything you can say about me, it’s that I have not lost the imagination I had when I was 5 years old.” [NYTimes]
 
Join the discussion...