Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Sophie Dahl's 2001 ad for Yves Saint Laurent's fragrance Opium has been named the eighth most offensive ad of all time by the British Advertising Standards Authority. The ASA agreed with some 948 complaints about the image of Dahl's naked body when the ad was released, saying that it was "sexually suggestive and, in an untargeted medium, likely to cause widespread offense." [Vogue UK]
  

• Kim France, the founder and former editor in chief of Lucky who started a blog called Girls of a Certain Age in December 2011, says she's not exactly comfortable with her new job description yet. "It feels very strange to me, the notion of people asking me what I do for a living, and at 48 to say, 'I'm a blogger.'" [The New York Times]
  

• Shopbop has added a feature that allows shoppers to look at sunglasses from all angles. Dragging your cursor across the screen turns the head of a model wearing dark lenses from Elizabeth and James, Matthew Williamson, and Rag & Bone, to name a few. [Shopbop]
  

• Tommy Hilfiger says he's always looked up to Karl Lagerfeld as a designer, who told him that he innovated Chanel by "looking at Coco Chanel's archives" and "making all of her designs relevant for today," he said. "So I wasn't doing anything dissimilar by taking all the American classics and making them relevant for today." [Style.com]

Donatella Versce had a wide-ranging talk in front of the Oxford Student Union on Wednesday, addressing everything from how she coped with the death of her brother Gianni Versace to how women can use fashion as means of defense.

"Fashion is a weapon that you can use when you need it," Versace said in a live interview with fashion journalist Tim Blanks. "I think my own look makes people think I'm tough but when they get to know me I'm very different. It's like armor that was useful to me in the first years after Gianni's death. . . I don't mean to sound like a martyr — just to make the point that I used my personal image to hide all these emotions."

Versace also talked about selling fashion in a tough economy, saying that she was glad to work with H&M on a lower-priced line. "I had no idea how they'd make my designs come to life at those prices, but they did it without restricting me at all," she said. As for her main collection, Versace said high-end clothing still sells because she pushes the envelope in terms of aesthetic and innovation.

"Designers have to ensure that their brand stays in the real world — like we have, hopefully, with Versus — but then you have to work hard to make sure the creativity survives," she said. "In hard times you still have to be extreme. My job now is to make our aesthetic evolve while remaining truly Versace — I want to make dresses that every woman wants: sexy and jaw-dropping — I always want it to be relevant but I also want it to be always about glamour."

Amanda Brooks says one woman's blog about country living is what inspired her take a break from working in fashion — but her friends in the industry say they have no doubt she'll be back in the game soon.

Brooks recently told The New York Times that Ree Drummond's blog The Pioneer Woman — which details Drummond's life on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma — gave her the idea to give up her job as fashion director at Barneys last March to take a yearlong sabbatical from life in New York City. "It's the idea of having a career on your own terms, anywhere," said Brooks, who's moving with her family to England for a year. While she's there she'll blog and work on a new book.

Perhaps Brooks's quest for life on her own terms started two years ago, when Diane von Furstenberg wrote the foreward for Brooks's book I Love Your Style, the designer told her, "It's time for you to figure out who is Amanda Brooks. Not Amanda Brooks who works for so-and-so. It’s time to define yourself as a woman." Below, some of Brooks's friends comment on how she's defined herself so far.

Diane von Furstenberg: "When I met her, she was very kind of WASPy and I didn't even think she was that pretty. But I loved watching her grow. She learns, she absorbs, she’s very entrepreneurial and she’s very nice."

Mark Dowley, Brooks's former boss at William Morris Endeavor: "Amanda is a complete person. Because she's so pulled together, she's incredibly disarming, but that can also be very intimidating."

Amy Astley, editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue: "She's a jock. She's the girl who is swimming in the sound in April. She's not a prissy fashion girl at all."

Artist Rachel Feinstein: "Amanda is fearless. If she decides to do something, she isn't worried about what people might think. . . She's incredibly genuine. It's hard for people to realize that someone like her is actually how she is. People want to dislike her because they can’t believe she’s had all this."