Tom Ford with his longtime partner Richard Buckley, Mamma Mia! Premiere; London, June 30.

*image: source

>> Depending on where you're standing, Harper's Bazaar has either reached a new high or a new low.  As reported yesterday by The New York Times, the Hearst-owned magazine forked over 40, yes 40, editorial pages, plus the cover of its July 2008 issue, to advertiser Estee Lauder.  The cosmetic company is keen to sell the socks off of its new perfume, Sensuous, and is using its four stable girls, Gwyneth Paltrow, Carolyn Murphy, Elizabeth Hurley, and Hilary Rhoda to give it their all. 

Desperate economic times call for desperate measures, it seems, but Allan Mottus, a beauty industry analyst, said it best: "Boy, they really sold out — Hearst — didn’t they?" 

It's no secret that advertisers and magazines have long been in cahoots — Nylon collaborated in a similar way with Chloe earlier this year, placing the faces of the brand's new fragrance on their "Beauty Issue" cover, with an accompanying editorial inside. Some seem to think Glenda Bailey and Hearst have taken it too far this time, but before getting in a huff about this specific incident, realize: Hearst has been pulling these shenanigans for years now.  Also, just by talking about it, we're giving Estee Lauder all the press they aimed for . . .

*image: source

»Rei Kawakubo has designed a red, pie-shaped shop concept that will house her Comme des Garcons for H&M collection when it comes out in early November; She also chose Peter Lindbergh to photograph Missy Rayder and others for the campaign [WWD]

»Harper's Bazaar brought a cadre of four staffers to couture, while Kate Lanphear is representing Elle alone [FWD]

»Alice Dellal nabbed a MNG Jeans campaign for Fall [Fashionista]

»Nick Knight has asked the likes of Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Naomi Campbell, and Giles Deacon to spin records live on Showstudio.com over 3 days starting July 9 [WWD]

»Karl Lagerfeld seemed to smile in approval at Kris van Assche's latest outing for Dior Homme yesterday [Guardian UK]

»Natasa Vojnovic has gone blonde (NSFW) [Supreme Being]

»Hye Rim Park did recently get married; Vogue Korea has a photo feature story [TFS]

»LVMH won a counterfeit lawsuit against eBay, so the auction site has to cough up $63.2 million [The Cut]

>> INSIDER WIRE —Kanye West making bunny ears behind Marc Jacobs as he gets interviewed; Carine Roitfeld and Emmanuelle Alt sitting together at Armani Prive, wearing the same Alaia stilettos; Charlotte Gainsbourg, front row in Balenciaga, politely refusing interviews . . . just another day at the shows. [Kanye Universecity, FWD]

Anna Wintour with boyfriend Shelby Bryan and Andre Leon Talley, Christian Dior Fall 2008 Couture Show; Paris, June 30.
*image: source

>> ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL —Kate Moss may have been "downgraded" from Roberto Cavalli's mainline ads to fronting his Just Cavalli line for Fall, but after the first two images from the new set have appeared, I would argue that Kate almost fits in better with the diffusion line's rocker feel than the overly-tanned, animal print-laden ads of Roberto Cavalli's senior line. [Models.com]

Things are happening in the Network today including outfit-making and original reportage. A wrap up is deserved.

StyleFinds put together a sweet little outfit in honor of Canada's super-fabulous birthday. She included those red Balenciaga sandals we love so much making it a fine birthday present indeed.

SlamXHype had a sweet little interview to boast about this afternoon. Namely, a discussion with the girls behind Checkinit, a creative agency with knowhow on what it takes to take charge of everything from original fashion editorial to corporate branding to website direction. It's 15 mini-pages long and it has pictures, you've no excuse to skip over it.

Chic and Untroubled explains to us another Nike custom endeavor that allows you to place a picture from your camera phone directly onto your sneaker. It's called Nike PhotoID or some such thing. We love it when our Network Partners help us wade through Nike news. It's not an easy task.

The gals over at M.I.S.S. Crew scoped out Hanky Panky's new website (which was not exactly up to par before the upgrade) with screen shots of what you can expect. Sadly, the site isn't ecommerce yet. We know about two hundred women who only wear this brand of underwear. The product might be eighteen dollars a pop but they'd surely make a nice little space for themselves.

Somehow we feel like we've written that line before. So the scoop, if you were at all tuned into fashion happenings on Friday afternoon (we don't blame you if you weren't, everyone needs a weekend off now and again), is that Louis Vuitton and Commes des Garcon are going half-sies on a three-month pop-up in Tokyo. Specifically, in the Aoyama district, home to the Prada Epicenter and all things covetable in both architecture and luxury goods. The pop-up shop will of course house exclusive collaborations, namely, six one-off monogram bags designed by Comme des Garcon founder Rei Kawakubo. As Suzy Menkes rightly puts it,

"Although there have been many recent collaborations between ‘high’ and ‘low’ fashion, starting with Karl Lagerfeld’s mini collection for fast fashion store H & M, this meld is different, since it involves a beacon of individuality with a company at the heart of corporate luxury management, as part of the LVMH (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton) group."

There are questions as to whether this joint-venture (instigated by Kawakubo--not, Marc Jacobs or LVMH) will alienate Comme fans. There are questions as to whether Comme is doing a little too much popping up and popping in (count a Speedo collab and an H&M collab, among others). There are also questions as to whether all of Louis Vuitton's bag collab antics might not undermine the brand's reputation for refined luxury (i.e. the days of the trunks and whatnot). Rei Kawakubo is titling her bag for Vuitton, 'The Party Bag' and we can't help but feel it's an overall sentiment for Vuitton's recent handbag endeavors. One big, 'however', is the recent Ebay victory LVMH had which only energized their intellectual property. That is, perhaps the answer to the last question is, despite contradicting whispers, no.