>> Marchesa's Georgina Chapman is known for her polished look — and her frothy gowns: "More is more! That's the Marchesa motto," she wisecracks — but, she warns: "I look much more civilized than I actually am. I'm actually an incredibly disorganized, messy person. My mother says I'm like a disease that can walk into a room and get it infected. I can destroy things in seconds." Marchesa cofounder Keren Craig corroborates with a story from college: "We were in Thailand, [and] a lot of people's huts got raided by thieves, but we kept all of our clothes on the floor, so I think if anyone tried to ransack us, it looked like someone had beat them to it. I thought I was messy until I met Georgina!" [Harper's Bazaar]

>> In a few short years, Alexander Wang has built what was reported at the end of 2009 to be a $25 million business — and he recently renovated and moved into a $2 million Tribeca apartment.

But, he tells the Telegraph UK, his designs are still inspired by what he sees on the streets or "on the subway": "I think with more success it's more important that you do stay grounded and that you surround yourself with people who keep it real. And yes, y'know, my apartment is a little nicer now and I have a car and I don't have to take the subway all the time, but I'm still the same person. That's always been our idea with the clothes. There's a certain sense of fantasy but at the same time it feels very, very grounded." He adds: "I mean, my closest friends are still the people I knew before I had… any of this. They're my core, the people I hang with the most. It's not like all of a sudden Kate Moss is my best friend!"

He has no intention of quelling his brand's growth, however. "With every project I always want to find the next challenge and the next challenge is just as exciting as the previous one," Wang says. "So, like, I push myself and as the company grows and things get bigger and bigger and bigger, the excitement and the thrill of it just keeps driving us. So, you know, we just wanna do more!" Finding success, Wang says, means that he's created a brand "that lives on after I've gone." He stipulates: "I do have fear…I'm just always willing to take the risk."

>> At the forefront of fashion's current obsession with androgyny? Transgender Givenchy muse and model Lea T — who intends to have gender reassignment surgery — and Jean Paul Gaultier muse Andrej Pejic, who has said he would have a sex change operation for Victoria's Secret. Pejic weighs in on how he feels about the inevitable comparisons: "Well I don’t think my situation and Lea T's are completely different when it comes to our personal lives, but that’s personal, for me at least. And I really think people should stop trying to categorize me because of their need for labels. When it comes to our professional lives, well she only does women’s wear and I think I cover more fields. Some people in the industry will use us in a very similar way to represent similar ideas and some will want me to be a bit different from her – more androgynous, more boyish or even sex-less rather than womanly. I think professionally I am capable of being very versatile." [Stylecaster]

>> They just pocketed their first CFDA Award nomination, but it hasn't been an easy road. With the stigma attached to celebrity lines, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen say retailers were originally skeptical about The Row and whether they were actually designing it themselves. “People would drill us about fabric, where we’d make it,” Mary-Kate told Vogue in the magazine's April 2011 issue. “The first season, customers bought it, so the stores came back. And drilled us again.”

Even though they were never formally trained, the Olsens maintain that their design education started long ago. "We had a collection with Walmart at twelve," Ashley notes, "Which was the upper tier of the tween market. It was before celebrity designers.” “And we were really designing it,” adds Mary-Kate. “It would be jeans, a bit bohemian, or with a little blazer. It was really fashion-forward.”

Now, with The Row, the Olsens are all about the finishing touches: they produce gloves with fingertips made in high-tech treated leather, so you don't have to take them off to use a touchscreen. And, they just debuted their first bags on The Row's Fall 2011 runway, which are finished with rectangular brass snaps boasting tiny The Row logos — "I’m obsessed with branding," Ashley says — and spans, Vogue reports, a "supremely supple, superdeluxe range of crocodile and snakeskin backpacks, computer bags, and clutches. One design, which ranges from mini-shoulder bags to totes, has two compartments sandwiched together, with textured skin on one side, suede on the other. It’s called the Twin."

So what does the future hold for the twins? “The thing about us,” Mary-Kate says, “is we think big. Huge.” Ashley, meanwhile, gets a little more specific: “I want to run a studio. I’d probably like to manage other people on their brands. It could be an artist. A young designer. It could be an existing brand.”