Tiger-Selling Fashionisto Arrested; Lady Gaga To Design Sunglasses

Latest
  • Police arrested a 47-year-old man at Nick Knight‘s SHOWstudio for trying to sell an unusual prop: this giant stuffed Bengal tiger, which was once a prop for an Alexander McQueen shoot. The tiger, an endangered species, lacked papers. [Daily Mail]
  • “I knew I had to write something on Yves because Yves was a celebrated and mythical personage,” says Pierre Bergé. “I knew that other people would write a bunch of bull.” [TDB]
  • Lady Gaga is said to be in talks about an eyewear collaboration with London’s Linda Farrow. Smoking sunnies for fall, anyone? [WWD]
  • Meanwhile, here’s a highschool picture of the artist formerly known as Stefani Germanotta, wearing an Abercrombie hoodie. Scandale! [Trueslant]
  • New York Fashion Week this September — the first ever at Lincoln Center — will conflict with the second day of Rosh Hashanah. The CFDA sent a letter to designers asking them all not to move from their timeslots, since each move forces a cascade of other reschedulings, but said that it would work to accommodate any designer who doesn’t wish to show during the holiday. [WWD]
  • According to “sources,” Naomi Campbell is set to celebrate her 40th with a huge party on the French Riviera, her (still technically married) Russian billionaire boyfriend Vladimir Doronin at her side. [Mirror]
  • Alexander McQueen is set to expand into men’s underwear this fall. A basic pair of briefs will cost around $52.50. Apparently, McQueen had been been working on the deal prior to his death, but for fashion observers hungry for any sign of PPR‘s intentions for the brand now that McQueen is gone, this foray into licensing might not inspire much confidence. [WWD]
  • And someone is trying to sell “www.alexandermcqueenfashions.com” for $500,000 on eBay. [BoingBoing]
  • Emanuel Ungaro is said to be for sale. If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a struggling French fashion brand with a couture archive to die for, now’s your moment. [NYPost]
  • Model Sophie Arterton has a stalker. He just got slapped on the wrist with an 18-month conditional discharge and a restraining order. [BBC]
  • Legendary fashion scribe Lynn Yaeger‘s apartment is full of collections: antique boxes, dolls of all descriptions, and reindeer sweaters feature prominently. She explains: “[M]y collecting started innocently enough, decades ago, with a desire to perk up my house with a couple of interesting geegaws and maybe add a few pieces of old-fashioned glamour to my wardrobe. Back in the day, your only option was to cruise the local flea markets and wait for the occasional antique show to roll in town. Then one day, oh, maybe 12 or so years ago, I was at my desk at the Village Voice when a colleague moseyed over to show me something our new toy, the computer, could do. He typed “Martha Chase doll” (a circa 1910 plaything I was obsessed with at the time) into something called eBay (funny name, right?) and when those doll faces popped up on the screen, my life changed forever.” [Inside Source]
  • PETA is upset with Jessica Simpson for wearing snakeskin. [People]
  • If you want to watch Christian Louboutin — or his body double — dance around a stage in a pair of studded black Oxfords, then, well, this video’s for you. [Fashionair]
  • If light-up Jimmy Choos are more your thing, these can be had for just under $2,500. [NYPost]
  • Whitney Port‘s lawyers are denying the allegations made in a lawsuit filed by ex-employee and former friend Adrienne Baravetti, who claims that Port’s clothing line was largely her work, based on her vintage collection, and not Port’s. Baravetti is suing for unpaid wages and damages. [E]
  • Twiggy says her HSN collection was inspired by “obvious go-tos” like the Union Jack, and her own vintage pieces. Also, she has a rose named after her. [FWD]
  • 16 West 21st Street, the new condo building whose interiors Zac Posendesigned, has an ad campaign featuring Barbie dolls living the “model life.” [FWD]
  • Moises de la Renta‘s collection for Mango consists of five t-shirts. [Refinery29]
  • Meanwhile, Irina Lazareanu, according to Derek Blasberg, is set to join the long line of model/designers. [SB]
  • 2009 was a bad year for beauty. A famine of beauty, one might even say: spending was down in all categories. Fragrances were hit the worst, with consumers spending 10% less on perfumes in 2009 than they had in 2008. Yet Macy’s still managed to sell 72,000 bottles of Beyoncé‘s Heat in just an hour. [WWD]
  • A study published in the American Economic Review shows that in Indonesia, anti-sweatshop campaigns have led to substantial wage increases for workers at the targeted companies (like Nike), without increasing unemployment. So while the argument is sometimes made that activists who seek to get third-world garment manufacturers better wages and conditions are putting people out of work, since sweatshop workers are lucky to have any jobs at all, it appears that that’s not the case. One reason? Nike’s wages were much, much lower than the Indonesian average. From the paper: “vendors for Nike were able to implement significant wage increases before even approaching the average wages across the Indonesian manufacturing sector.” [Economic Woman]
 
Join the discussion...