>> 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.”

>> Nicola Formichetti unearthed Rick Genest — also known as Zombie Boy — on Facebook, and he's walked in both Mugler runway shows (Fall 2011 men's and women's) that Formichetti has done so far, acting in tandem with Lady Gaga as something of a house muse and face of the brand. But it wasn't as simple as contacting Genest through Facebook and flying him into Paris in time for the shows, Formichetti says: "[Genest] emailed me back straightaway and he was like, 'Yeah, sure, I would love to [come to Paris], but I don’t have a passport.'" Later, Formichetti comes to find out "why he couldn’t get a passport: because he was homeless. He had a lot of fines or something because he was always sleeping on the street. ... He just kept telling me, 'I'm not a criminal, I'm not a criminal.' It took him so long to tell us. Oh my God, he was so emotional. He was crying and saying how this was going to change his life. It was a beautiful moment." Formichetti ended up paying the fines — "It was a lot . . . like ten or twenty [thousand dollars]" — himself. [Hint]

>> The Fall 2011 Fashion Week season was engulfed by the rumors run rampant concerning the standing of John Galliano at Christian Dior, Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent, Hannah MacGibbon at Chloe, and Christophe Decarnin at Balmain, but Business of Fashion's Imran Amed pointed out a couple of other trends that emerged during the season.

First, the transition of streetstyle photography into streetstyle paparazzi. "The ‘bloggers walk’ in the Jardin des Tuileries, site of many major Paris shows, is now completely out of control," Amed writes. "Indeed, it’s become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the aggressive paparazzi who stalk Hollywood celebrities outside bars and clubs and a few of the bad apples amongst the hordes of photographers that accost editors as they come in and out of shows."

Why the sudden aggressiveness? Amed notes: "Several street style bloggers told me confidentially that the competition is extremely fierce for getting the best photographs, which can then be sold on to global editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar each for as little as $200, but up to $1000 or more."

And second, while many designers cut back on how many they hosted at their shows and presentations, there has become an unprecedented demand for seating. "At Céline, any senior editors from the UK were forced to stand," Amed reports. "And more than one front-row blogger complained to me about not having access to Givenchy or YSL." A good part of that newfound demand is coming from consumers, Amed writes: "At the Jason Wu show, I was seated next to a section allocated to Nordstrom, which had chosen to give away most of its seats to top clients who had flown in specially for the event from across the country. Indeed, department store buyers told me the pressure to find seats for top consumers is 'enormous.' If a woman spends more than $1 million in a store, she has come to expect VIP treatment."

>> Hedi Slimane is consistently rumored to be heading back to the designing side of fashion, but for now, he seems quite content as a photographer: "It seems quite refreshing to be on this side of fashion, to have the distance and freedom. The fashion system has been busy keeping up with broadband and blogging/social networking. It is not always for the best, but it did give fashion a global audience. The unfortunate outcome might be the obsession and collusion between the celebrity culture and high fashion. It is just a big global mess of random endorsement. Nothing looks worse than a dress or a suit on a red carpet. It is an ongoing tragedy of cheap fashion on cheap celebrities, followed by ubercheap comments. I only like designers’ clothes on models. Good models have an inner understanding of the clothes and design." [Style File]