Lydia Lunch: “T-shirts have become the daily uniform of every slob too lazy to button up a shirt front.” So the post-punk chanteuse prefaces Ripped ($30, Rizzoli), a new coffee-table (or tour van?) collection of rock tees cool enough to convince you to join the slob brigade and renounce buttons forever. Vintage dealer Cesar Padilla—chasing, he explains, a great, lost collection of band shirts thrown out by his mother—has gathered the best of the best for the new book, borrowing from the collections of Betsey Johnson, Thurston Moore, the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, and more. Banal but true: They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Shirts celebrating Television (above), the Kinks, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry are enough to send you straight to eBay (most often, probably without much success). For insider tips, Padilla will be on hand later this month to celebrate the book at Acne’s Greene Street shop. Good luck getting the shirt off his back.

—Matthew Schneier

Photo: Courtesy of Rizzoli

The red carpet may have been rolled up and stored for the season, but the gowns that walked it are getting their second act at Armani/5th Avenue. Along with Lady Gaga’s spacewoman/ambiguous-religious-icon Armani Privé dress and bejeweled bodysuit from this year’s Grammys (pictured; on Gaga here)—so tiny that it took two devoted Armani staffers to fit on the mannequin—the store windows were rife with dazzlers. There’s the navy and cobalt beaded Armani Privé number Anne Hathaway wore to the 2009 Golden Globes, when she was nominated for Rachel Getting Married. And the fire engine-red sequined gown Katie Holmes donned for the 2008 Met Costume Institute Gala. “There’s been all these little girls on vacation who come in and ask, ‘Can I try that dress on?’ ” the flagship’s vice president, Philippe Neraud, said with a smile. Though from first glance, shoppers may not know that a few moments of glory often comes with a bit of sacrifice. “I was unpacking the dresses and I tried to lift this one out, but I couldn’t do it without using two hands,” Neraud explained of Beyoncé’s metal chain-link minidress from the 2010 Grammys. “I don’t know how she wore it. It was like 30 pounds!” he added. “She had the weight of the world on her shoulders.”

Giorgio Armani’s red-carpet retrospective is on display at Armani/5th Avenue, 717 Fifth Ave., NYC, until March 21, 2010.

—Bee-Shyuan Chang

Photo: Courtesy of Giorgio Armani

It seemed a simple enough concept: To rebuild following its devastating earthquake, Haiti needed cash and tools. So that’s exactly what Tools For Thought founders Diana Campbell and Julie Ragolia set out to find. Campbell, a museum administrator, and Ragolia, a fashion stylist with an art background, canvassed their friends and colleagues to gather tools. Of course, when your friends and colleagues are Nate Lowman, Dan Colen, Alex Katz, and Ed Ruscha, they’re swinging a different sort of hammer than the one that repairs the hospital. No matter. The hammer—the one is question Ruscha’s, by the way, a mallet for pounding canvas stretchers—is going on the auction block, along with the tools and work of more than 100 other artists, to raise money for Partners in Health’s Haiti efforts. Kon Trubkovich, Alex Katz (whose paintbrush is above), Subversive’s Justin Giunta, Marilyn Minter, Kiki Smith, and Patti Smith have all donated work to Monday night’s auction, where Smith (Patti, not Kiki) will perform and Alexandra Richards will spin. Attendees are encouraged to bring a mighty tool of their own—the checkbook.

Tools for Thought’s Rebuild Haiti cocktail reception and silent auction take place Monday, March 15, at Sotheby’s. For more information, visit www.ourtoolsforthought.org, or to purchase tickets, click here.

—Matthew Schneier

Photo: Courtesy of Tools For Thought

Last season, sheers ruled the runways—Dior to Dolce, Fendi to Ferré. (You can check them all out here.) And this season? They’re still here. See-through styles showed up at YSL, Stella McCartney, Givenchy, and Valentino, among others, but the point was really hammered home at Giambattista Valli’s dinner for Moncler Gamme Rouge last night in Paris. Valli girls including Heidi Mount and Jess Stam pictured), and Coco Brandolini went for gauzy frocks, baring plenty of skin. (So did Lou Doillon, in a chic, sheer jumpsuit that occasionally revealed more than she might have preferred.) The hand-wringers will continue to wonder, especially in this season of the power suit, how these will play at the office. But when your office is the runway…

—Matthew Schneier

Photo: Courtesy of Moncler

Amy Winehouse—remember her?—is designing a capsule collection for Fred Perry (pictured). But this isn’t just a “sign the dotted line, cash the check” agreement. “The range clearly has Amy’s handwriting,” says a Perry exec. Shakily, we imagine. [WWD]

Bad news—maybe—for NYC revelers. Restaurateur Cobi Levy turned up at a community board meeting yesterday to seek approval for his new tapas venture…at the former Beatrice Inn. Closing time is looking to be 1 or 2 a.m. So much for the Bring Back Beatrice campaigns. [Page Six]

Speaking of real estate, the Seaside Heights house that put up Jersey Shore’s Bumpit-ed residents (we’ll never believe that poof is 100 percent organic) is now renting for $2,500 a night. Vacation in (Ed Hardy) style! [NYT]

And good news for the guys: Yohji Yamamoto has announced that after a few seasons off the runway, he’ll show his menswear collection in Tokyo this April. [WWD]

Photo: Courtesy of Fred Perry

Despite being surrounded by water, Manhattan doesn’t make for your usual island living. But if an escape is what locals are after, try a jaunt to City Island, the cozy fishing village in the Bronx that happens to give a setting (and a title) to a new indie flick starring Julianna Margulies and Andy Garcia. City Island is a hilarious take on family dysfunction, and Garcia had a double dose of blood-runs-thicker-than-water: The actor’s real-life daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido plays his daughter on-screen. “She’s been wanting to do this since she was five years old,” Garcia said at the film’s premiere last night. “I read the script and saw a part in it for her, so I told her about it. She wanted to audition for it. But as for the rest of the decisions? I stayed out of it,” the actor added with a laugh.

Garcia-Lorido marveled at the quaint fishing village. “I never heard of it, but I grew up in California,” the fledgling actress explained. “But I have friends in New York who don’t even know about it!” That would exclude native New Yorker Vera Wang, who knows her hometown trivia. “Sure, I’ve been there,” the designer said. “I’ve gone out and had lobster.” She may soon be called upon to lead an expedition. “Well, we better all go and head out there now,” Narciso Rodriguez suggested at the after-party, where he mingled with Emily Mortimer, Parker Posey, Cynthia Rowley, and Sandra Bernhard. “I’m sure there’ll be a mad rush after the movie comes out!”

—Bee-Shyuan Chang

Photo: Dave Allocca / Startraks Photo

Elie Saab’s post-show party in his sweeping apartment in the 16th was well under way, with a parade of top French fashion editors, Princess al-Thani of Qatar, and a lavish Lebanese buffet, when Dita Von Teese swept in around midnight. France’s newest American expat, who now splits her time between Paris and her home in L.A., was a rare sight this fashion week: She attended the Jean-Charles de Castelbajac show (she’s dating the designer’s son, Louis Marie), but she’s mostly been settling into her new apartment near the Place des Vosges and getting the hang of the language. “When I am out grocery shopping in the neighborhood I can pretty much tell when people are talking about me, but that’s about it,” she said. “It’s a challenge, a different lifestyle, a new experience in a beautiful city.” The burlesque star is readying her Crazy Horse Paris show for a Las Vegas debut in late April. Saab designed some of her favorite costumes, one of which Von Teese wears in a bathtub number called Bain Noir.”It’s a sleek, femme fatale evening suit inspired by Mae West, with black bugle beads, sequins, and jet beading—like a tuxedo but with a skirt cut high on the thigh,” she explained. “I just showed up and it was done. He’s amazing.” Sounds like one to get the neighbors talking.

—Tina Isaac

Photo: François Goizé

As we enter a new decade, the fashion business, like the rest of the world, is encountering significant economic and technological change. In this new series, Style.com’s editor in chief, Dirk Standen, talks to a number of leading industry figures about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Olivier Zahm’s love of women is well documented, not least by Zahm himself on his Web site, www.purple-diary.com. But the French editor and founder of the twice-yearly independent publication Purple Fashion has many other passions: art, fashion, his daily uniform of white or gray jeans and black Yves Saint Laurent leather jacket, parties, freedom. There may be an element of self-promotion behind some of this, but in an increasingly conformist world, Zahm offers an original, entertaining, and astute voice. During our conversation, conducted by phone last month between New York and Paris and somewhat condensed here, he discussed his conviction that magazines will exist as long as fashion exists, his suspicion that the financial crisis was just a pretext to scare people, and his fervent wish that the world in general—and Lindsay Lohan in particular—would stop spending so much money on clothes.

What was the original impulse behind Purple Diary?
[It happened] in a way by accident, because the Purple Diary was just a section of a bigger project I had, and because I started to take pictures every day of parties or pictures of my life, I needed an interesting way to use these pictures and not to let them go into digital archives and disappear. Because now everything disappears. It’s digital, but if you don’t copy your hard drive, pictures disappear after one or two years…So then I had this idea of having a personal diary, an intimate diary, mixing intimacy or privacy with my public life and creating a sort of contrast between what’s really intimate, like sex and love, and what’s really public, a party, a fashion show, an exhibition. What’s meant to be public and what’s meant to be private and make them, like, coexist. It was suddenly exciting because it was, in a way, breaking the barriers of something, which is actually what the medium itself, the Internet itself, does. For celebrities it’s a nightmare, but for me it’s a pleasure. It’s a decision. I would love to go further into intimacy, but my girlfriend and my lovers are sometimes a bit reluctant.

Have any of the reactions to the blog surprised you?
What surprised me is the number of people coming, because I print 60,000 copies of Purple [a season] and I have 100,000 [weekly Web site visitors], more visitors a week on the blog than I have readers in one season with the magazine…I can tell from the discussions I have that people know that I’ve been there, I’ve done this, I’ve seen that exhibition or this film, and then it comes into the discussion and it’s changing my life in a way and my interaction with the girls, with the friends. It hasn’t changed my interaction with the advertisers yet. [Laughs.]

Well, let’s talk about that.
I haven’t found the right way to make a little money off it because I don’t want regular advertising. I think it would be really bad. So I don’t want advertising [of that kind]. I’m looking for a way to involve brands, but I haven’t found it yet and it’s not my priority.

You say you’d like to go further into intimacy?
It’s always delicate because I respect the girls around me. They’re real people and I respect their privacy, so I can’t really go too far, but sometimes it’s really playful and they’re OK. But when they’re more emotionally involved, it can be a bit difficult, and I totally understand. To me love and sex is the most beautiful thing on earth, you know. It’s more beautiful than a landscape, so I love to keep pictures of the girls in these private moments because they are giving you the most beautiful side of themselves. It’s like a gift from God. It’s beautiful. I’m not New Age, I’m not mystical, I just really love it, and it’s so beautiful to capture with a camera that I really want to share that, you know…And also, Purple is a lifestyle. With my magazine, what I want to do is personally to be more free, and I want people to be more free, to open their possibility of contact, of sex, of love. I want that. This is important to me. I consider that Purple is a free lifestyle. Not in a stupid way, not in a childish or immature way, in a mature way now because I’m 45, 46. So the blog is also this vocation to see what constructs a lifestyle, to see what could be. If my life would be perfect, it would look like the Purple Diary. You see what I mean? It’s an illusion, too. I’m constructing a character.

Even Jefferson Hack joked to me that he lives vicariously through your blog, and Jefferson’s not exactly the kind of guy who stays home with his slippers and pipe.
It’s interesting. I’m discovering the possibilities of this medium, the Internet and the blog, and there’s a lot of possibilities. It’s also a way for me to train myself as a photographer, because now it’s my new obsession. I want to become a photographer, not just an editor. I want to be a photographer. I was a bit shy before and now I’m convinced I can do as good as the people I’m generally working with, except for five of them. [Laughs.]

I think you said somewhere, though, that the Internet is not a creative medium.
It’s not a creative medium for fashion, you know. For fashion, I think a magazine is the place for creativity, because for fashion photography, you don’t only show the last collection and the clothes, you show the way they should be worn, you show or you try to capture a spirit, a certain moment in time, and this is creativity in fashion. It’s a way to incarnate and interpret fashion. On the Internet, I don’t see [it], but maybe I’m wrong. I think this is what a magazine is made for. It’s the perfect medium for fashion. Television is not a medium for fashion at all. I don’t know what television is the medium for, actually. It’s a medium to control the population and to make them more stupid. Definitely, the Internet is a medium for interaction. It’s a medium for contact. Not for creativity.

So you don’t think the Internet will replace magazines?
The commercial magazines may be replaced, because the Internet is a better place for commerce and immediate information. The Internet is a chance for magazines because it forces the magazines to be more creative and to really explore what they are, what is the essence of a magazine and what a magazine is meant for. And it’s not meant for commerce…Magazines are also made for instruction, for energy, for voyeurism, for sexiness, for pleasure, for a lot of things. Not only a place to sell products. This is why you don’t have any good magazines now in Japan. It’s a disaster because they just consider magazines like an extension of advertising…This kind of magazine, strictly commercial, will certainly disappear because you have more information, more contact, more possibility of buying on the Internet. But a true creative fashion magazine can’t be replaced by a true creative fashion site because it doesn’t exist and it won’t exist. You don’t want to look at a fashion shoot on your screen, do you?

Well, no one’s done a good job of it yet.
It’s really difficult. Maybe some creative people will find a way to make it really fun and entertaining and surprising. Maybe we’ll see soon some interesting fashion and art site that will change [things]. But do they need the format of television then, of a small TV program, something moving?…I don’t know, it’s complicated. But to me the future of magazines is actually the future of fashion. If fashion disappears, magazines will disappear. But as long as fashion has something to say and as long as fashion is a dream or as long as fashion is a creative domain made by a few crazy people that we love, from John Galliano to Sonia Rykiel, then we’ll do magazines. We’ll do the best magazines we can, because we are there to celebrate their minds, in a way. The designers are the true inspiration for fashion magazines, or the artists, architects, filmmakers, whatever. As long as art and fashion are exciting domains, the magazines will be good.

Are fashion shows, the live experience, still important? How big a leap is it to go from Nick Knight filming the Alexander McQueen show to a virtual show without an audience?
To me, the Internet is just an extension of reality. It can’t replace reality. A show is a ceremony. It’s a religious ceremony with the people that really believe. You don’t go to a Comme des Garçons show if you don’t really believe in Comme des Garçons. If you don’t believe in it, you go to a baseball match, right? So it’s a ceremony. You need a ceremony, you need a master of ceremonies, and you need a few people to witness the ceremony. It’s not a dark, obscure, dangerous ceremony. But then, the Internet is just a way to expand it and open the ceremony to a lot of people who want to enter. So I don’t see any competition. I don’t think the Internet will absorb the reality. I think the Internet can only expand the reality and open it and transform the perception we have of this reality. Because introducing the Internet into a fashion show, what Nick Knight was doing with Alexander McQueen, is also transforming what a fashion show is. [Using] really advanced technology for the Web, it’s a future step of fashion shows. It’s not that they will disappear, right?

But are there too many shows? You’re into freedom; I guess you’d say everybody should be allowed to show.
Yes, plus you only go where you want to go. Or you only go where you are not invited. You only want to go where you are rejected. The fashion show is a really important moment. It’s a ceremony, and it’s also still five to ten minutes of pure fashion, free from everything, free from commerce. I mean, we have to preserve this little moment, this psychological concept of potlatch, where you spend money for just feux d’artifice, fireworks. We celebrate, and we only celebrate and we spend the money away because we celebrate our love for fashion. So you and me, we have to go to fashion shows in this mind, with this spirit.

Are the commercial pressures on designers too strong now? They’re designing eight-plus collections a year. Is it possible to be creative under those circumstances?
That’s certainly true. That’s a big problem…They are doing too much and they have a lot of pressure, and I don’t even know how they are able to handle that. It’s really hardcore. They need to have a really good team with them. They need to be respected and to be protected from this. From what I can witness and for a few friends of mine, I can tell that it’s really not easy. And the designers don’t know how to react. They can’t be like Monsieur Saint Laurent was, like saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sick, I took too much drugs, I can’t finish the collection, I’m going to Marrakech now.” That was the old good times. [Laughs.] They [would] be fired immediately.

But then how do you explain Karl Lagerfeld, who can handle it all?
Karl has a good team around him, and he knows how to drive them and how to have everyone working in the same direction very quickly. And he is extremely quick at finding ideas, so he doesn’t lose one day, one hour, one minute. That is quite exceptional. He finds ideas very quickly because he’s also an encyclopedia; his mind is an encyclopedia, so he opens this book in his mind on this chapter and, tock tock tock, this chapter for this idea, boom boom, and then he puts everybody working in that direction. And everything is well articulated and clearly organized in his brain. He doesn’t confuse or have too many ideas; his mind is clearly oriented and structured. He is a living encyclopedia. He is quicker than the Internet, than Google.

Has the rise of fast fashion affected luxury fashion?
I don’t see any problem with that. To me, it’s always been there in one way or another. It’s part of the game…The fashion system itself is a mega copy machine. Fashion doesn’t stop copying—the past, the tribes, the workers, whatever. Fashion is just a way to copy, copy, copy, copy everything. I don’t think in a bad way. You know even Martin Margiela clearly has a line that’s just made by the exact reproduction of clothes. That’s fashion. That’s the essence of fashion. How do you copy? The problem in fashion is not that you copy, it’s how do you copy and what do you copy and how do you mix different copies…All the clothes have been made and made and made and made. They are just remade and remade and remade.

Is the economic situation just a bad moment, or has it changed everything?
To me 2010 is a new start. I’m really optimistic about 2010. I can’t tell you why, but to me it’s a new start. It’s not only economic. Everyone is picking up on the money or the economy or the credit [crisis] as the main determination. To me, in fashion the main determination is the desire. Is it a period where we really want to move on, or is it a depressing period in a psychological way? To me it’s very open. I don’t know why I have this feeling, but it’s a very clear and open period. It’s a new decade. It’s exciting. You have a few more years to live; let’s go for it. We are really lucky and we are living in a very privileged world. To me this economic crisis is just a massive intoxication. We are rich and we are smart and we are, let’s say, beautiful, so what’s the problem? It’s just a way to scare people and to make them work more. There is no crisis. I don’t see the crisis. To me there is no crisis. It has always been difficult to find money, and it will always be difficult to find money when you want to be free and to do what you want, where you want to, whatever the bank system is. And when the bank system will have collapsed, I will continue to do a magazine.

Talking of the magazine’s survival, I think you’ve said the way you dress, your uniform, was a conscious decision to brand yourself, to raise Purple’s visibility.
The same uniform every day is a good way to avoid extra expenses in this difficult time. [Laughs.] I put Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Purple, but I disagree with her obsession for buying, buying, buying every day as much as possible clothes. I’m doing a fashion magazine and I know I’m [being] recorded, but I would love all the people who love fashion to buy a minimum of fashion, just what they really like and wash carefully their clothes. [Laughs.] What was the question? If I branded myself? Yes, because today fashion is about celebrity, so you have to be glamorous yourself if you want to be taken seriously in a superficial world that we call fashion. You have to look glamorous so that people think you’re part of what you’re dealing with. Before, I thought that to be taken seriously you should just be invisible. But that was the nineties. I was really anti the star system and anti-fashion and anti-labels. I was like Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang, and then I totally changed in 2001. I changed to survive, but also the times changed. What was relevant in the nineties wasn’t really relevant anymore. And in 2010, it’s again more complex. It’s not enough to be a celebrity. No one cares no more. I will have to move on.

You’ve been an art critic and an art curator. Do you ever worry that the playboy image will overshadow those aspects?
Every man should be a playboy, no? It’s the nature of man, right?

I don’t know, my wife might have something to say about that.
Every man should celebrate and seduce women because women love to be celebrated and seduced, and they’re bored if you don’t try to be at your best or have the best conversation, the best look. It’s not an insult to be [called] a playboy…Of course, I love art and have been doing art critiques and have been curating shows, but if you ask me what I prefer, woman or art, I would say woman. Art is art. I need art in my life as much as I need food, but the most beautiful thing on earth is to meet a woman. That’s what you will remember at the end of your life, right? Plus, it’s a game. It’s really funny. You can’t seriously consider yourself a playboy, or you’re already a bad playboy.

—Dirk Standen

See also:

The Future of Fashion, Part One: Robert Duffy >

The Future of Fashion, Part Two: Cathy Horyn >

The Future of Fashion, Part Three: Hedi Slimane >

Aimee Mann is better known today as a composer of sad-eyed, symphonic chamber pop, whose dour songs won her an Oscar nod when Paul Thomas Anderson used them in Magnolia. But in the eighties, as part of the Boston-based new wave band ‘Til Tuesday, Mann was in full avant provocateur mode—with a wardrobe to match. When we read on Racked that Mann was selling a collection of her outfits through NYC vintage dealers Vagabondnyc, we contacted proprietors Andrea Perini and Naveed Hussain for a closer look. Mann had a great eye for high-eighties rule breakers. VagaBond has the Yohji Yamamoto asymmetrical sarong she wore to the ‘85 MTV Music Awards, as well as a covetable gray Yamamoto tunic dress (above right). Mann was an early jumpsuit proponent, too (her white Katharine Hamnett, above left). Other pieces are drawn from decades-old collections by Jean Paul Gaultier and Comme des Garçons. One thing’s clear—Mann’s been on this beat for years. Get in line, fellow ultra-blonde pop iconoclasts. No names, of course.


For more information and to buy, visit www.vagabondnyc.com.

—Matthew Schneier

Photo: Courtesy of VagaBond

“Grown-up” clothes are the talk of the runways in these nose-to-the-grindstone times. They’re what’s next for Minnie Mortimer, too—though in the spirit of a good time, she’s not one to take maturation lying down. “I really think that the clothes reflect that my own life is changing,” the designer said at home in L.A. “I’m just straddling that time in my life when I’m still a young girl who wants to go out, and yet I’m being dragged into adulthood. My wardrobe has to keep up with that.” Girls just want to have fun, in other words. Well, there are still Mortimer’s preppy shirtdresses for that, but for Fall, she’s added more tailored daywear and a few elegant matte silk blouses with Victorian details to the mix. (Suiting separates shown with tiny bloomer shorts should dispel any fears that she’s getting gray before her time.) “I’m starting to develop some new fabrics, and I’ve been drawing new prints and colors that I am going to incorporate into my new designs,” she continued. “Just learning how to design and print my own fabrics has been such an amazing process for me. Playing with the different width of stripes, the sizes, and the separation between them.” Play and work—not a bad compromise.

—Alexis Brunswick

Photo: Courtesy of Minnie Mortimer

On Tuesday, the troika behind the Webster in Miami—Frederic Dechnik, Laure Heriard Dubreuil, and Milan Vukmirovic (pictured)—took over the private salons of the Maison Baccarat to introduce selected friends to the Louis XIII Rare Cask by Rémy Martin. Dressed in a plunging, lace-up black dress by Joseph Altuzarra, Dubreuil noted that despite the fashionable guest list—which included Altuzarra, Alexander Wang, Pierre Hardy, Charlotte Dellal, Pamela Golbin, the Traina sisters, and Gabriele Corto Moltedo—this was really just a family affair. (After all, Dubreuil’s family owns Rémy Martin.)

Through dinner, the talk turned to art and architecture. Dellal, the designer behind Charlotte Olympia shoes, described the restoration process on the ironwork in her new London boutique, set to open in early May. “It’s a nineteenth-century shop, so I am restoring it to what I think it must have been then, by way of the forties,” she said. Dubreuil’s boyfriend, artist Aaron Young, regaled guests with tales of his as-yet-untitled work in progress, a gold-plated modern chariot to be impaled atop one of Augustus’ columns at Rome’s Teatro di Marcello at the end of May, around the opening of his solo show at the city’s MACRO museum. That takes care of the high art; a few attendees were as invested in what’s coming up from below. “Fashion’s like the Titanic,” observed the multitasking creative director Vukmirovic, who also designs Trussardi 1911. “The band plays on, but the era of big designer egos is over. Ready-to-wear is becoming what couture used to be. Fashion is direct and the future reality is that everyone is a star, whether or not they have a fashion culture or even means [to buy it]. The only question that matters is, do they like it?” Some like the booze, at least-reports indicate that the Louis XIII, a few bottles of which will make their way to the U.S. in May, has almost entirely pre-sold at €10,000 a pop.

—Tina Isaac

Photo: Stephane Feugère

The ink’s on the paper: Madonna has signed with Iconix to create a line of Material Girl fashions, starting with a juniors’ line at Macy’s. Personally, we’d have preferred a Like a Virgin-inspired bridal line. [WWD]

We’re not opposed to the idea of Mad Men Barbies. But if they’re going to be made, at least give them Christina Hendricks’ legendary curves. A hipless Joan Holloway? What a waste. [NYT]

Speaking of mini mannequins, one grumbler is claiming—rather publicly—that Givenchy axed five models the night before the show, after insisting on exclusivity for its girls. [Page Six]

And Love will live-cast the Miu Miu Fall ‘10 show on its site at 1 p.m. EST. [Love]

For two guys who started the crotch-baring, NSFW, gay—make that very gay—magazine BUTT, Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom are far more well mannered than you might expect. They’ve even gone so far as to call their new women’s magazine The Gentlewoman—paging Miss Prim! But even if their first and latest mags—a glossier, more fashion-oriented men’s title, Fantastic Man, came in the middle—aren’t exactly kissing cousins, a smart, chic sensibility unites them. No crotches were bared at the quintessentially Parisian launch party, held in a salon in the Saint-Germain last night, but the design and edit crowds gathered to sip Champagne and toast newly minted editor in chief Penny Martin (pictured, left, with Delfina Delettrez Fendi, Brian Phillips, and Jonkers) and cover girl Phoebe Philo, shot by David Sims with a proper Celine scarf knotted around her neck. (”She brought that with her,” Jonkers reports, “but it’s vintage. I imagine she took it out of the archives, or maybe she bought it on eBay.”) Philo is the gentlewoman to a tee, say the editors. “We’re already thinking of the next issue, and who would be good,” Jonkers went on. “But it’s true, a good gentlewoman is hard to find.” Van Bennekom, sadly, wasn’t feeling up to snuff at his opening; he had a cold and decided to duck out from the party early. On his way out, though, he was kind enough to refuse kisses and would only shake hands after a dose of disinfectant. “I don’t want to get anyone sick! That would not be very gentlemanly, or gentlewomanly, either.”

—Derek Blasberg

Photo: Jacques Habbah

Jimmy Choo maniacs already wear the label’s footwear 24/7, but founder and president Tamara Mellon wants to underline the point. The new Choo 24:7 collection is the brand’s concession to those who work and weekend—a complete “ultimate shoe wardrobe,” says Mellon, to take the wearer from day to night. Mellon was in L.A. yesterday, where Peter Nordstrom hosted a chic lunch in her honor at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge to celebrate Choo 24:7’s Nordstrom at the Grove debut. “I really thought about what are the pieces I always go back to no matter what the trend of the season is,” said the London-based Mellon, in leopard-print YSL, before taking a moment to muse on her West Coast surroundings. “I personally love having breakfast by the pool and just taking in the sunshine here,” she sighed. With updated versions of Mellon’s favorite styles in a flurry of colors, materials, and heights, there’s a heel for even that.

—Victoria Namkung

Photo: Donato Sardella / WireImage / Getty Images

Since the death of Yves Saint Laurent (pictured at work, above) in 2008, there’s been no shortage of tributes, headlines, and homages. But the Saint Laurent retrospective, opening this Thursday at Paris’ Petit Palais, is the biggest yet. The show includes 307 couture pieces in pristine, barely worn condition, from the vaults of the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, as well as drawings, photographs, and films. (The Fondation will host a show of ready-to-wear from the YSL Rive Gauche collections next February.)

“Chanel liberated women, but Yves Saint Laurent gave them power,” Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s partner in business and life, said at a press preview of the show. In case anyone was fool enough to argue with Bergé, the exhibition proves his point. There’s the famous menswear touch YSL brought to womenswear in the form of his Le Smoking tuxedo suit from 1966, and also the caban (peacoat) suit, which opens the show. And then there’s the feminine element, too: the nearly nude silk mousseline blouses and backless Chantilly lace dresses. One room, covered floor to ceiling with color swatches from the archives, attests to inspiration drawn from the palettes of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; another shows the debt to fine art, with collections inspired by Mondrian, Matisse, Van Gogh, and the Bambaran art of Africa. Even where collections were greeted with less than reverence, it’s hard not to hear Saint Laurent having the last laugh. An entire room is devoted to the scandalous, forties-inspired Spring ‘71 couture collection, the first to take vintage as an influence. It was unanimously panned by the press—unfavorable reviews paper the gallery walls—before being enthusiastically taken up by trend-setting women from Jane Birkin to Bianca Jagger.

This show may be the biggest, but it’s not the first. As Bergé fondly recalled, Diana Vreeland organized Yves Saint Laurent: 25 Years of Design at the Met in New York in 1983. “Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s director at the time said, ‘But Diana, you can’t imagine devoting a show to a designer who puts his name on everything, including neckties.’ But Yves Saint Laurent was always about creation,” said Bergé. “It was big business too, but creativity came first.”

Yves Saint Laurent runs March 11 through August 29 at Le Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris, +33 1 53 43 40 00, www.petitpalais.paris.fr

—Rebecca Voight

Ann-Sofie Back has jumped the gun. Though she’s been signed on as creative director at Cheap Monday since 2009, thanks to the plan-ahead cycles of fashion, her first full collections aren’t due until Spring ‘11. That doesn’t mean you have to wait to get Back. The designer has created capsule additions to the Cheap Monday ranges for both men and women for Spring and Fall, the first of which is bowing now. Think of the new pieces as a teaser, one that New Yorkers can check out on Thursday night, when A.OK the basement shop at the Bond Street location of Oak, which marks the U.S. debut of Back’s designs for the Scandinavian label. “Young, playful, and rebellious” are the words Back uses to describe the Cheap Monday ethos, which she intends to apply to all parts of the brand, including but not limited to its well-known denim. “The denim will always set the agenda, but the rest of the collection needs to work on its own as well,” Back explains. For her capsule creations, she has applied denim-esque ideas such as whiskering, shredding, and patching to other kinds of clothing, such as tees, tights, and sweats with cut-out and graphic duct-tape-print details.

—Maya Singer

Photo: Courtesy of Cheap Monday

Karl Lagerfeld is the latest designer to be appointed as a Commander of the French Légion d’Honneur. That’s a relief: With just the constant accolades and endless new assignments to keep him going, we were worried he was going to get low self-esteem. [WWD]

And speaking of Chanel, The Moment checks in with house accessories designer (and Maison Michel milliner) Laetitia Crahay for a few salty quips about fashion, style, and the Kaiser. Among the revelations: She went to fashion school disliking fashion, couldn’t be bothered with draping, and supports a skincare regime that includes drinking, smoking, and partying. [The Moment]

André Balazs is reportedly in talks to create a fictionalized TV show about life behind the scenes at his famous hotels. Will the stars’ notorious antics be visible through the thin veil of fiction? Celebrity publicists, stand by. [Page Six]

And Graeme Fidler and Michael Herz—late of Aquascutum—are headed to Bally, says Fashion Week Daily. [FWD]

Photo: Jens Hartmann / Rex USA

Enthusiasm for the eighties is on the wane, so it was smart for Rosemary Rodriguez to relaunch the Thierry Mugler line today with a collection she described as épure, meaning the excesses were swept away. You could see echoes of Mugler’s exaggerated shoulders and inverted triangle silhouettes in her collection, but she savvily avoided the clichés, save for a few leather hourglass dresses with padded hips. An evening number, on the other hand, was so densely encrusted with glinting crystals that it might make a Rodriguez convert out of Beyoncé. Mugler himself designed stage costumes complete with padded hips, bien sûr, for the superstar’s recent tour.

—Nicole Phelps

Photo: Pascal Rossignol / Reuters

With Paris fashion week beginning to wind down, the editors and buyers who’ve made the four-city circuit have a little time to relax before heading home. We checked in with Net-a-Porter’s Natalie Massenet, Holli Rogers, Claudia Plant, and Kate Blythe for a few of their favorites:

Le Café de l’Homme at the Musée de l’Homme has amazing views of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. But those two aren’t the only sites to see—the museum is also home to the Lanvin showroom. We always try to stop by for lunch before or after our appointment.

Les Archives de la Presse (pictured) is an amazing vintage magazine shop in the chic Marais. Every fashion magazine under the sun since the beginning of time is in here. It’s an amazing research and inspiration resource—I’m a little sorry to reveal it.

Kinugawa is our favorite Japanese restaurant. We always come for shabu-shabu, though that’s usually early in the week, while we’re still playing by the eat-right rules—by the end, we’ve collapsed into Ferdi (32 Rue du Mont Thabor) for the best cheeseburger in Paris.

On the way home, you’ve got to hit Reciproque for secondhand couture and Serge Lutens for perfume. Divine. And it wouldn’t be Paris fashion week without a drink or a snack at one of the classics—Hôtel Costes, L’Avenue, and the bar at Le Meurice.

For more updates from Net-a-Porter, click here or, internationally, here.

Photo: Courtesy of Les Archives de la Presse

“It’s women’s day, women’s week, women’s month, and women’s year. But it’s not that we don’t like men, we love men!” Diane von Furstenberg enthused at her Meatpacking studio. For DVF, every day may be ladies’ day, but for the U.N.-approved International Women’s Day yesterday, the ageless designer—effervescent in purple sequins despite just deplaning a flight from L.A.—launched a specially dedicated CD. “We do something every year, and it was my staff that came up with the idea,” von Furstenberg explained. The girl-power music compilation—thankfully, with nary a Spice Girl in sight—features tracks from Tegan and Sara, Bebel Gilberto, Joss Stone, and Estelle, among others. Proceeds from sales of the CD and an International Women’s Day DVF tote will go to benefit Vital Voices, a charity focused on investing in disadvantaged women worldwide. For her part, Estelle was flattered to have her single “Shine” included. “Anything I can do to help,” the singer told us. “But you know Diane, she’s amazing. It’s not often in our industries that you meet a woman like that. She does the work, you know?” Von Furstenberg was indeed doing a bit of work—the designer was giving a test run to a lovely floral perfume she’s perfecting—but don’t call her a role model. She deadpanned: “You only start being called a role model when you get old.”

—Bee-Shyuan Chang

Photo: Amber De Vos/PatricMcMullan.com