>> At the opening last night of the Madeleine Vionnet retrospective in Paris — speaking of which, where are Rodolfo Paglialunga's first designs for Vionnet, which were promised in early June? — Vanessa Bruno told WWD she’s been working with director Stephanie Di Giusto on a four-minute mini-movie for her label starring Lou Doillon.  The clip is to be screened in July before appearing online.

Meanwhile, the other French designer maintaining a contemporary line of chic basics, Isabel Marant, talked to Russh in their July/August 2009 issue about how she started working with her stylist and Vogue Paris fashion director Emmanuelle Alt:

It's funny because Emmanuelle and I kind of started out together a long time ago. I always admired her style and what she did for Vogue, but we lost contact for a while because she was overloaded with work. Four years ago her husband Franck Durand became my artistic director and I was always saying 'I love what your wife is doing, I would love to work together with her one day.' So it was little by little. Now we have done about five shows together. I love the vision she has for my clothes, she manages to put them together in a way that is a bit more sophisticated than what I did before . . . I love it when she goees tac, tac, tac... puts the different pieces together, and I'm like 'oh yeah, that's exactly it!'

Marant says they "hardly do [show] castings any more" because "Emmanuelle, Franck and I just know which girls we want to work with — the most beautiful ones — and voila, we usually get them" but admits that she and Emmanuelle don't always agree.

In [the Fall 2009] collection she thought it would be good to use thigh-high boots. I was like, 'Oh la la, that is not me at all, I would never wear thigh-high boot'. I normally think they are super vulgar. But when she put the silhouettes together, I understood straight away that they could actually be me . . . She really managed to make them me [above, left]."