>>  Marion Hume of The Observer always does these fantastic profiles for the Sunday paper, and this time around it's Manolo Blahnik, who sounds off on his shoe pet peeve: platforms, the strangest place he's seen his shoes, and whether he uses Botox or not.  Entertaining, to say the least.  But then, like I said, Ms. Hume's profiles always are.

>> Forbes magazine recently did their roundup of the world's billionaires, and lo-and-behold, those French fashion rivals Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinault both made the cutoff.  Arnault, CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (read: Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, to name a couple) and Christian Dior SA, came in at 7th richest person in the world.  Pinault, owner of PPR (read: YSL, Balenciaga, to name a couple) rang in at 34th richest person in the world, poor man. 

Although Pinault might win in the end after all -- his son Francois-Henri just announced his engagement to Salma Hayek, who is expecting their first child.

>>  Marc Jacobs has always been very open about his past substance abuse problems,  and it seems that nothing has changed.  Recently Mister Marc hit seven years of sobriety, but Jacobs' business partner Robert Duffy announced today that shortly after showing Louis Vuitton in Paris, Jacobs flew to a rehabilitation center in Arizona to treat a relapse of drug and alcohol abuse.  I can't say I'm too surprised, he had been looking a bit haggard during the fall shows, but may he make a full recovery and come back to us soon (especially after his bang-up eponymous collection, I can't wait to see the follow-up)!

>> When Cathy Horyn interviewed Riccardo Tisci a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Tisci revealed something something that shocked me: his January couture collection had twenty-nine customers.  Twenty-nine.  I knew that the number of couture clients has always been very small, but I never realized it was that few.  And to think, as he told Ms. Horyn, when he first arrived at the house of Givenchy, there were only five couture clients.   How amazingly lucky that with the money-driven world we live in, couture still lives. 

>> Just to illustrate what I was implying in the previous post about Mr. Newton being on his own plane.  It never ceases to amaze me how timeless his shots are.
Unknown and Kylie Bax, 1996, by Helmut Newton

>>  Dolce & Gabbana announced yesterday that they were pulling this Spring 2007 ad from print.  The reason?  Because it was drawing criticism for condoning violence against women.  The whole thing seems a little bit fishy to me -- this image seems pretty typical D&G fare, so I'm slightly confused about why they decided to step down now. 

And besides, where would fashion be if it didn't push a few buttons here and there?  We sure wouldn't have any of Helmut Newton's iconic images,  famous (or infamous, whichever you prefer) for being threaded with themes of S&M and female fetishism.  Not that I'm really going to compare this ad to a Newton shot (sacrilege!), but you catch my drift.

>>  And when it's on a dress by the king of comfort and sophistication, Phillip Lim, I love it that much more.  The antiqued off-white color and the 3-D crafting of the roses both remind me of a beautiful porcelain vase -- I have such a penchant for porcelain.   And yet it's in the form of a t-shirt dress, so it's hardly fragile, and very wearable.  What else can I say, except: yes please!

>> If you're in New York for the night, fashion power couple Ruben and Isabel Toledo (illustrator and creative director of Anne Klein, respectively) are speaking tonight at Parsons about the future of risk-taking design.  Could be interesting, and you never know who else you might see.

Parsons, The new School for Design, 560 Seventh Ave., Second Floor, 6 pm.  Admission free.

>> Twenty years in fashion.  As a model.  Now that is no mean feat, considering models these days are lucky if they stick around for two years. 
The April 2007 issue of British GQ celebrates Naomi Campbell with a 22-page editorial by Steven Klein, this ravishing cover, and a 7,000-word interview between Naomi and Piers Morgan, the tabloid newspaper editor who outed her leaving a Narcs Anonymous meeting in 2001, spurring an intense legal battle on privacy rights.   Ms. Campbell does not hold back in the interview (at least in the preview I've seen), peppering Mr. Morgan with questions right and left.

Twenty years in fashion for Naomi.  And to think, a rep from a modeling agency told Robin Givhan a few days ago that he was trying to get more black models working in Paris, but editors tell him that "People don't see clothes on black models."  You know, I can't see Naomi's clothes on that GQ cover, but I can see her shoes just fine.

>>  The haircut and facial expressions remind me of Agyness Deyn a bit, but the body... is alllll Linda Evangelista.  (Take a look at the leopard fringe bra below... so amazingly nineties!)
"Le diable au corps," shot by Steven Meisel, Vogue Paris June/July 1989