Fred Segal

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Hermès doesn't sell its Birkin handbags online, but flash sale sites like Gilt, Rue La La, and MyHabit do. Here's a look at how they ensure authenticity. [BuzzFeed]
  

• A new deal with Sandow Media will expand Fred Segal beyond its Southern California roots. The retailer is expected to set up shops in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, as well as in Europe and Asia, with the first of the new stores opening some time next year. [Racked]
  

• Karl Lagerfeld has signed on to give the exterior of Monaco's Hotel Métropole a redesign. The first part of the project, which involves refreshing the hotel's pool, terrace, gardens, and a new restaurant, will be unveiled in July. [The Daily Telegraph]
  

• Paco Rabanne's artistic director Manish Arora is leaving the brand after designing just two season's worth of clothing and despite the fact that Arora's designs had gotten favorable press coverage. Lady Gaga even wore one of his dresses to the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards. [The Cut]
  

• Iris Apfel will debut her own handbags in collaboration with HSN, which also sells her jewelry line. The bags are made from Mongolian lamb's wool, snakeskin, and calf hair, and will retail for $228 to $398. [WWD]
  

• Greg Kessler's latest installment of Model-Morphosis shows off Chanel's most popular lacquers. Nails go from unadorned to coated with the flick of a mouse. [T Magazine]
  

• Nicola Formichetti will debut an eponymous fashion label next year. The clothes will be "digitally oriented and high-tech . . . Why do you have to have a zipper when you can have a jacket that's molded to your body?" Formichetti explained. [Styleite]

  Photo: A Birkin snapped on the streets during Milan Menswear Week in January 2012.

There's a certain kind of woman, we imagine, who shops exclusively at Fred Segal and drives there by way of her old vintage car which will never rust because she lives in a place where the sun is always shinning. Queue, Tulle & Cloth Spring 2009 who offered a mini skirt for every occasion and a color palette on prozac. This collection looks better made than others we've seen this week and will suit that conservative but bubbly kind of girl who also gets her nails done every week and never, never goes tanning. The slim trousers, we have to say, could be inserted in just about any chicster's wardrobe. As for the menswear, the boys matched their female companions by way of sweet knits and simple cardigans. These boys could have been the women's lovers or brothers--it was all too sugarcoated to decipher. 

If discretion is the better part of valour then the fashion industry is valiantly staying away from its red state friends and their new crusading new Queen, this isn't because we are uninformed princesses without a care for reality despite what we have said this past week and Guy Trebay has now reiterated, no we really just have no comment. Well OK, we like her up do even if we don't condone highlights. We bet Hilary wishes she had been left alone like this too.

Fred Segal has a new pop-up shop called 15 Minutes. It will be run like an art gallery, where the shop’s structure is permanent but the theme, decor and wares on display change regularly

Want to see a picture of Martin Margiela? Eric Wilson has one of the last invisible man. Really, because designers have gotten to be such little publicity hounds (and not for the reasons they should be like say their work) this quiet relative anonymity is considered quite shocking.

If you are concerned with what is or is not wearable on the catwalks, which we think is rather relative to your own comforts, then we suppose its nice that someone is keeping score.

Do you read seating charts like tea leaves? Well Givenchy has much fodder for the divination set as the front row was packed with LVMH executives. What does it all mean!

Perfumer Sarah Horowitz's fragrance brand is going mainstream by repackaging her premiere line of scents in a more accessible form and launching it in Anthropologie. We had no idea that even the perfumers had to go for down market markets and collaborations. Not that we are saying Anthropologie is down market per say.