“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

“It’s like an early George Lucas movie set,” Giambattista Valli said at his Moncler Gamme Rouge presentation today. True, fans of THX 1138 probably felt right at home in the Mylar-wallpapered alcove where Valli was greeting editors. But the clothes themselves—not unlike those in his signature collection, shown yesterday in the same Place Vendàme former bank—had more of a sixties feeling á la Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges’ space age chic. The surprising thing about that is how cool and spare the box quilted wool nylon capes and metallic thread nylon chubbies looked compared to last season’s more romantic silk rose-festooned puffers. The other intriguing development: the plethora of ribbed-knit layering pieces, from snoods and mittens to full-body unitards. “I love to enrich the wardrobe; it’s not just quilted jackets,” Valli said. Twenty-first-century Barbarellas, take note.

—Nicole Phelps

Photo: Courtesy of Moncler Gamme Rouge

Uniform dressing has been the buzzword on the European runways, but that doesn’t mean savvy designers haven’t found ways to tweak the suiting standards. We’re loving Paris’ creative plays on the double-breasted jacket. Stella McCartney sheared the sleeves off of hers to create a sleek camel coat-dress (left). Hussein Chalayan opened his show with several variants of the DB, each one low-slung and low-breaking for a sexier style—our favorite buttons just above the hem (center). And Phoebe Philo, a coat mistress if there is one working today, sent out a trompe l’oeil take at Celine: Hers closed along the far right side, with only a single top button to suggest a right-hand row (right). —Matthew Schneier

Photos: Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com

The hat beat is a tricky one: It seems that no sooner has everyone seemed to agree on a particular shape or style, then it’s on to the next. A season or two back, every boy at the Beatrice had found his way to a porkpie of sorts, a sixties-slick moment fatted, it felt, on Mad Men mania. Then, all of a sudden, they were gone. Giant, slouchy knit caps—snoods, if you will—replaced them, winter, spring, and fall. And now? We notice that two ahead-of-the-curve gentlemen, Hedi Slimane and André Saraiva, were out and about in the last week in similar floppy fedoras. Slimane saw things in black and white at Larry Gagosian’s opening for Andreas Gursky; André rocked a dandyish lilac version at Maison Darré . (Not to belabor the point, he lost it for the Purple party.) That’s two, and three, as they say, makes the trend. Any takers?

—Matthew Schneier

Photos: Patrick McMullan / Jean Picon

Revelers who made it through the queue in the freezing cold, down four flights of stairs, and into the classic Parisian night spot Le Regine last night had some serious celebrating to do. “We’ve been working hard,” said Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon, one of the party’s co-hosts, of his crew’s rigorous fashion week. “Tonight we’re dancing.”

Even fashion’s workaholics took a break. Street shooter Tommy Ton put down his camera, he said, “for the first time this season,” joining a crowd that included designers Alexander Wang, Henry Holland (pictured), Matthew Williamson, Daria Werbowy, and Jen Brill. Erin Wasson, in a crinkly leather hat, joined Opening Ceremony’s Carol Lim and company at the see-and-be-seen table behind a few tubs of vodka on ice, while Lindsay Lohan holed up in a more Frank-and-Dino corner, playing coy—well, as coy as one can play in a snowball-white fur hat during an impromptu amateur photo session. The New York, New York party has traveled around the international fashion weeks—it’s already made a London appearance—and it’s already developed a few standbys. It just wouldn’t feel like home without dancing on the banquettes, a haze of smoke (not always officially approved), and, of course, “Empire State of Mind.”

—Chris Wallace

Photo: Mathieu Gallix / Courtesy of relativemo.com

The next photog has been signed for the annual naked-girls-frolicking Pirelli calendar, and the lucky guy is…Karl Lagerfeld. (He’ll shoot it in his Paris studio, rather than the usual tropical locale.) We’re doing our best to act surprised—Karl Lagerfeld? Shooting gorgeous people in states of undress? No way. Stop! (Anyone want to start taking odds on whether he’ll manage to sneak Baptiste in there?) [Fashionista]

Calvin Klein has unveiled a new video for its X underwear line, and it is racy and controversial. (It includes bleeped-out swearing.) OK, now we’ve really heard it all—Calvin Klein underwear and controversial ads? Brave new world! [WWD]

Speaking of brave new worlds, Giuseppe Zanotti is entering the Internet. The designer will create several styles exclusively for his new online boutique, which is to be manned by Yoox. [WWD]

Abbey Lee Kershaw apparently has a tattoo on the inside of her lower lip. It was meant to read “truth” but, due to the amateur job, looks more like “bacon,” says the Times of London. Is it wrong that we prefer bacon? [Times Online via Refinery29]

Everyone is in Paris or L.A. right now—except, of course, for everyone who isn’t. And pretty much everyone in the latter category turned up to the Bowery Hotel on Friday night to celebrate the new issue of The Journal. Chloë Sevigny, Chrissie Miller, Nate Lowman, Glenn O’Brien—all still in Manhattan! So are Smile guys Carlos Quirarte and Matt Kliegman, who hosted the fête, and so is Journal founder/editor Michael Nevin (pictured, center, with O’Brien, Gina Nanni, and Mary Nevin), who admits that intercontinental travel would probably put a crimp in his workout routine. “That’s how Terry and I bonded, actually—we both go to the same gym, and we’re both kind of obsessed with it,” Nevin explained at the party, speaking of lensman Terry Richardson, whose work appears in the new issue. “The gym seems like the most un-inspiring place in the world,” Nevin added, “but lately it seems to be the place I get all my inspiration. There’s something about the routine, or working your muscles. It sends fresh blood to brain, I guess.”

—Maya Singer

Photo: Carrie Schatz/PatrickMcMullan.com

While all eyes are glued to the catwalks, one guy’s are fixed on the off-runway scene: Tommy Ton, who has followed the action from New York to London to Milan and now to Paris for Style.com. (Click here for a selection of Tommy’s shots.) I love Tommy’s work, and so does Colette’s Sarah Lerfel, who’s given over a wall of her store’s gallery space to his photos for Style.com. Tommy’s favorites from New York, London, and Milan are already up there, but since the shows are still going on in Paris, this last leg of the international collections has been a work in process, with two more being added each day.

“I think French girls are always constantly chic. There’s just something about the way they effortlessly wear clothes,” he explains of the final stop on his tour. Ton’s shots look effortless, too—maybe because he catches his subjects unawares, thus avoiding the usual labored posing. “I don’t like the standard posed position just because everyone else takes that same posed vertical photo,” he goes on. “I try to select a photo that captures that exact moment, but I like it when you can see someone naturally at their best and unaware that they’re having their photo taken.” Ton says the best places to capture these moments are the shows in the Tuileries, where there’s a long approach and a classically French backdrop. But at the end of the day, it’s just a connection: “You know, when it comes down to it, it’s just gut instinct, and I’ve become less analytical and just shoot whatever jumps out at me.” His nonchalant moments will still be up at Colette until the end of fashion week. After that, you can take them home with you: Snaps from all four cities are available for purchase, sold in editions of ten for €150 each.

—Derek Blasberg

Photo: Tommy Ton

With a dozen fairs, countless openings, and thousands of collectors in New York for Armory Arts Week, the Standard probably wasn’t the first place aficionados were looking to find compelling art on Friday. But that’s exactly what was on display at the launch of the hotel’s new StandArt channel. Curated by Creative Time, this seasonally updated in-room video installation, which also bowed in L.A. and Miami, includes ten films by international art stars including Mika Rottenberg, the anonymous (and ubiquitous) Bruce High Quality Foundation, and Marilyn Minter. “It’s so rare that you have time to watch art films,” says Creative Time curator Meredith Johnson. “So we chose pieces that are more hypnotic and durational so you can turn it on at different times of day.”

Among those are Minter’s lush Green Pink Caviar, which went on tour with Madonna last summer and is also playing in the MoMA lobby. “I love doing this type of stuff,” Minter told us; she’ll soon do it again, with a forthcoming video project that will “look like silver.” Equally seductive is BHQF’s 75-minute black-and-white fictional tribute to Godard, L’eau de vie un film de Jean-Luc Godard, which follows a group of character types (actor, art consultant, agitator) as they hunt down elusive truths at 2005’s Art Basel Miami. Elsewhere, Lee Walton acts out his friend’s Facebook statuses in F’Book: What My Friends Are Doing on Facebook and the Neistat Brothers race a Ducati against a Dutch city bike in the hilarious Yogurt vs. Gasoline.

“The competition for this is cable TV and you have to make this better than that, and it’s tough because Jersey Shore is soo good,” said Casey Neistat, wearing a towel with his blazer and tie after a jump into the pool earlier in the evening. (He’d mistakenly assumed the water was at “bathwater” temperature.) While the plunge provided a shock to his system, the installation is already paying dividends. “I’m doing a crazy Lazer Tag movie and I’m shooting here next Sunday,” he said. “Think Jason Bourne meets 1986, Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag.” Just another Sunday at the Standard.
Check out a selection of the films, below.

—Michael Slenske

Here’s a complete list of the night’s winners.

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
The Hurt Locker

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Mo’Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR
Up

ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
Avatar

ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Avatar

ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
The Young Victoria

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Cove

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Music by Prudence

ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING
The Hurt Locker

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
The Secret in Their Eyes

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
Star Trek

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Up

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SONG)
“The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart),” Crazy Heart

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Logorama

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
The New Tenants

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING
The Hurt Locker

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING
The Hurt Locker

ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS
Avatar

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Hurt Locker

This time of year in particular, the famous faces are all over Hollywood. They were at the launch party for fashion photographer Tom Munro’s eponymous first book last night, albeit mostly (with a few key exceptions) framed on the wall. The majority of the celebrities Munro has shot in his 15-year career also made it into the book, from Tom Cruise (who was available for a paltry 80 minutes at their first shoot) to Lady Gaga.

Also in the book is Justin Timberlake, who was kind enough to stop by the gallery on Melrose Place. At most openings, he’d be your biggest get. But most openings aren’t for artists who are tight with Madonna, who drew a crowd like moths to a flame when she entered. And so Munro, who’d been calmly sipping Moët near the door, was suddenly beelining it through the gallery with Madge and her entourage. When he returned, Munro talked about the trip the two of them recently made to Africa for her charity, Raising Malawi. “We bounced around in four-wheel-drive vehicles. Everyone’s mucking in, covered in dust. It’s not glamorous,” he said.

It was hardly the first time Munro, who also worked on Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet tour and directed her “Die Another Day” video, had been on board with her. How does Madge travel? “Fast,” Munro said. Naturally, she was long gone by then.

The lips run in the family, so no surprise that Jade Jagger stamped a kiss motif all over her new collection of sparkly tees for her Jezebel label. She was showing the new range—along with the jewelry she designs and produces in India—at Le Meurice hotel during Paris fashion week. All business, it would seem. But Jagger’s a dancing girl, after all, so she also invited a few friends to L’Appartement, André Saraiva’s private party house in the tony seventh arrondissement, for snacks and bubbly before the Jezebel party at Le Baron, with her husband, Dan Williams, on decks. Jagger Industries has always been a family affair, though: Jade has two in-house muses—teen daughters Assisi and Amba—the first of whom has already done some T-shirt graphics for Jezebel. The collection itself grew from the club nights Jagger and Williams began in Ibiza and exported around the world, from Mumbai to Moscow. “We started with Jezebel nights, and the idea for the collection was music-inspired fashion,” Jagger said. And although Ibiza is still close to her heart, she now spends most of her time in India, where she works on the beading for her jewels in Mumbai and maintains a house in Goa. Not that Europe has reason to be jealous. “Have pout, will travel” could be the family motto: Jagger opened her first shop in Notting Hill this fall, and she has Paris in her sights, as well. She’s currently working on a new flacon design for Guerlain’s Shalimar, the Oriental vanilla classic from 1925.

—Rebecca Voight

Photo: Seth Browarnik/Startraks Photo

Camper, the Majorcan footwear company, is known for its casual kicks, but the label also keeps a bead on the weird-is-wonderful market. With its bottom line attended to by sensible shoes, the company is free to indulge its taste for artful oddity with the collaborative Together line. Not that they’ve stinted on the trappings for the project. Together’s collaborators have included the industrial designers Jaime Hayon and Hella Jongerius and German fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm, now in his fourth season with the brand. Willhelm, fresh from a show on Friday where he dressed models in Japanese shibori-pattern sheaths and surf-punk graphic tees to weirdly Dada effect, kept the beach bum vibe strong for Camper. His multicolored, hiking boot-inspired trainer with an open “wave” sole gave even Camper’s ingenious, Barcelona-based design department pause (they eventually figured it out). Perhaps in celebration of that accomplishment, the brand threw Willhelm a party last night at its Faubourg Saint-Honoré shop. “I wanted a pair of shoes to make you feel like you’re standing on a wave,” Willhelm explained of his design. “I suppose my favorite place to be is somewhere between good taste and bad. And I’m sick of slick high heels, now. I prefer funny feet.”

—Rebecca Voight

Photo: Courtesy of Camper

The Oscars won’t be Hollywood’s only fancy awards night this weekend. The Independent Spirit Awards, traditionally a pretty scruffy affair, got natty for its 25th anniversary, allowing big-time stars to dress up—including Vera Farmiga, in Marchesa (pictured); Carey Mulligan, in Christopher Kane; and Olivia Wilde, in Ralph Lauren—in honor of movies made, in many cases, for less than a studio blockbuster’s wardrobe budget.

The show moved this year from the beach to downtown, from daytime to evening, from flip-flops to semiformal. “Well, I never wore flip-flops,” John Waters clarified. Later, on the podium, the Hairspray director lent the show some of his famous edge when he fantasized about making a Precious sequel about the love child of Precious and Justin Timberlake. Emmy Rossum was drinking straight Jameson in the Piaget lounge before dinner—”Normally, I hardly ever drink,” she assured us—and host Eddie Izzard indulged in some on-stage theology that certainly wouldn’t have flown at the Oscars.

Other parts of the evening, though, felt like a Sunday preview. Mo’Nique added yet another trophy to her mantle for Precious, and Jeff Bridges won for his role as a washed-up country singer in Crazy Heart. Bridges had his thumb in his belt during his acceptance speech, and even thanked his stand-in. Presumably he won’t be quite as laid-back on Sunday—or wearing a leather jacket.

—Darrell Hartman

Photo: Stewart Cook / Rex USA

To the naked eye, it would seem like a strange place to have a shoe store: a seemingly residential neighborhood with what looks like government building on a square. But as Giovanna Battaglia explained to me at Pierre Hardy’s shop on the Place de la Palais Bourbon, looks can be deceiving. On the opposite side of the square is Condé Nast’s French headquarters (”and believe me, shoes are an important thing in there,” Battaglia explained), just up the road was “the best flower shop in all of Paris,” and just a few doors, a cafe called Le Bourbon, one of the city’s premiere lunch spots. I’ll never doubt Pierre again.

The reason for this particular gathering was Hardy’s collection of Cube Perspective canvas bags and shoes, which were on view throughout the store. Citing old palazzos in Venice and more modern examples in contemporary art, Hardy said that cubic motifs have been a common design element for centuries. “A designer, by nature, likes geometric shapes and sculptures,” Hardy explained, which in turn explained the unique shape of his retail space: an L-shaped store in the corner of the square. I had to know-what was the significance of the letter L? “I never thought about it, but sure. It’s an L! For love. The love of shoes!” Attendees like L’Wren Scott (pictured with Hardy) and Anna Dello Russo likely would’ve agreed.

—Derek Blasberg

Photo: Courtesy of Pierre Hardy

There were so many bodies at Rankin’s Eat Me Naked exhibition opening on Friday night at the A.Galerie that it was hard to see the bodies hanging on the walls. That’s a shame, since many of them—nudes of Kate Moss, Heidi Klum, Eva Herzigova, and Rankin’s new bride, Tuuli, among others—have never been shown before. The prolific photographer, publisher (he co-founded Dazed & Confused, Another, and Another Man magazines with Jefferson Hack), and film director was also celebrating the publication of several new books this year (seven, to be exact), including one, on the L.A. label Thomas Wylde, that has been in the works for five years. “In 25 years in the business, I have never seen anyone work so much,” said gallery owner Arnaud Adida. “I never looked to do anything more than take photos,” Rankin shrugged. “I just do it because I love it. There are fashion people, and then there are people like me. I’m a tourist. I go to a show and as much as I love it I am overwhelmed by excess. I keep thinking, ‘How much money can you spend on something?’ “

Eat Me Naked runs through April 17 at A.Galerie, 12 rue Léonce Reynaud, Paris, www.a-galerie.fr. —Tina Isaac

Photo: Rankin

An Education was the movie that earned Carey Mulligan her ticket to the Oscars, but the out-of-body experience of being nominated is more like something out Avatar. “I met Dustin Hoffman in London, at the BAFTAs, and he said to me, ‘I feel like I’m just going to wake up one day and I’m going to have tubes and wires coming out of me, and I will have been in a coma for the last 30 years.’ I feel exactly the same, being in a category with Meryl Streep,” the Hollywood ingenue said on her way into the Chateau Marmont yesterday, where the Diamond Information Center was throwing a spring-themed luncheon in her honor.

Mulligan’s dress choice was daffodil Bottega Veneta, a perfect match for the trellises and pink bouquets decorator David Rodgers had arranged in the hotel’s Bungalow One. (”Serendipity,” explained Mulligan’s stylist, Tiina Laakkonen, who let it slip that Mulligan will be wearing a European designer on Sunday.)

“It’s been a little trying,” Mulligan confessed of all the dolling up she’s had to do of late, “but I wear things that are kind of interesting and scary and fun, so I enjoy it.” Nothing scary on Sunday, though, “because it’s the Oscars, and you dream about it from when you were a little kid. So you don’t want to go and do the wild thing. You want to—not play it safe, necessarily, but just feel like, you know, if it only ever happens once, you wore something nice.” And if it happens again? “Well,” Mulligan said. And she stopped there. —Darrell Hartman

Photo: Courtesy of the Diamond Information Center

—Darrell Hartman

Photo: Courtesy of the Diamond Information Center

Demi Moore chose a minimally structured column gown from Victoria Beckham’s Fall ‘10 collection for the Hollywood Domino pre-Oscars gala last night. A tricky silhouette? Not for a red-carpet pro like her. The royal blue against Demi’s dark hair is a great color combination—especially now, when the fashion world is giving a full-on embrace to once maligned blue/black mixing—but what really sells the whole look is her accessories. Against her understated dress, her stone-encrusted Bulgari clutch, which might seem busy with other outfits, really shines. Finished off with Jack Vartanian jewels and tumbling, loose curls, this is a look we want Moore of. You?

Fall 2010: brought to you by the Global Association of Hosiery Manufacturers? Fall is always when the best of knitwear hits the runway, but this season, luxe socks are getting their turn at some of the most directional shows. At Rag & Bone (left), David Neville and Marcus Wainwright kitted their mountaineers in thick, multicolored knee socks peeking out of boots. Miuccia Prada chose dramatic cabled versions, paired for maximum effect with patent pumps (center). And at Christian Dior (right), John Galliano loved the frill of the chase, giving thigh-skimming stockings to a few of his lucky equestriennes. Insert your own “sock it to us” quip here.

Photos: Don Ashby & Olivier Claisse/FirstView; Don Ashby/FirstView.com; Gianni Pucci/GoRunway.com

Khaki and olive drab, military overcoats and aviator jackets, combat boots and cargo pants: The Fall ‘10 shows are chockablock with soldier style. But Farah Malik and Dana Arbib are bringing fashion literally into the war zone. The two founders of A Peace Treaty have set up production in Afghanistan, where they’re working with the nonprofit Afghan Hands to produce hand-embroidered scarves and—soon to come—a range of bags. Last night, at a dinner for the brand hosted by Claire Danes, Afghan Hands founder Matin Maulawizada (pictured, right, with Danes, Malik, and Arbib, all wearing A Peace Treaty) acknowledged that there are dangers to working in the battle-scarred country, but added that the benefits outweigh the risks. “We’ve got women there, whose husbands killed each other, and they’re working together, laughing and gossiping, and their children are growing up side by side,” Maulawizada explained over helpings of hummus and couscous at the Jane Hotel outpost of Café Gitane. “Even if I weren’t already an optimist, that would make me optimistic.” Arbib, meanwhile, noted that her and Malik’s reasons for producing in Afghanistan are only partly idealistic. “We look for places where there’s a tradition of doing the kind of work we want to do,” she said. “Afghan women have a history with embroidery. But we’ve got a whole range of knits—knit scarves and capes and ponchos—that we’re going to be making in Bolivia, because they really excel at knitwear.”

—Maya Singer

Photo: James Goldcrown