Choupette

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• "You may think I am high maintenance, but I assure you, the attention is worth it," Choupette Lagerfeld writes in the infamous diary her two maids keep detailing her every move. "Even my fur balls are glossy." [Grazia]
  

• Lady Gaga has sided with Oscar de la Renta in his tiff with fashion critic Cathy Horyn. "Bravo Oscar," the singer tweeted. "Only you would be so chic as to purchase an entire page in WWD, making statements like a good fashion citizen." [Styleite]
  

• Mugler creative director Christophe de Lataillade has revealed the secrets behind campaigns for the house's iconic fragrance Angel — including the set that nearly burned a model's flesh. [The Cut]
  

• Calvin Klein's ex-boyfriend Nick Gruber has accused the fashion icon of paying private eyes to "stalk" him and his new boyfriend, animator John Luciano. "Calvin can hire goons to follow John and me all he wants — we have nothing to hide. I've moved on. I've never been happier." [Page Six]
  

• Hedi Slimane will unveil his new Saint Laurent Paris store concept when he opens a store in Shanghai next week. The design, involving a lot of dark stone and mirrored surfaces, references the French art deco and Union des Artistes Modernes movements. [WWD]
  

• Versace has opened another store, too — online. Customers in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France can now buy the house's wares through a new ecommerce site. [Versace]
  

• Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet has been appointed chairwoman of the British Fashion Council, succeeding its leader of five years, Harold Tillman. [The Independent]
  
  Photo via Grazia

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Designer Olivier Theyskens has debuted a new shorter haircut, saying goodbye to the long, dark locks he's worn for years. The reason? "That's the thing," he said. "There's no real reason, but people always want to think there's something more to it. I've been wanting to cut it for years, but it's never been the right time." [Into The Gloss]
  

• Burberry designer Christopher Bailey and his partner, actor Simon Woods (Woods is the redhead who played Mr. Bingley in 2005's Pride and Prejudice), have registered to marry. They are believed to be planning an intimate ceremony in September — perhaps sometime after London Fashion Week. [The Daily Mail]
  

• Want to date a menswear blogger? Here's a list of 15 who are single — and exceptionally good at what they do. [Four Pins]
  

• Laetitia Casta says she was "so f*cking scared" working with Karl Lagerfeld's cat, Choupette, during a recent photo shoot for V Magazine. The shoot took place on a balcony, and Casta worried "that Choupette would step back and fall off and that Karl would hate me forever because I killed his cat." [Harper's Bazaar UK]
  

• Rumor has it Eva Chen is leaving her role as beauty and health director at Teen Vogue, but so far neither she nor the magazine has commented on the matter. [Fashionista]
  

• Paul Smith and Barbour partnered up for a very British collaboration that will be in stores Sept. 1. [Vogue UK]
  

• Moises de la Renta took to his Facebook page to rage against all the people asking him for invitations to his father's New York Fashion Week runway show. "Go find ur own invites, fake ass punks," he wrote. [Page Six]

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• After a year-and-a-half as editor in chief of Vogue Paris, Emmanuelle Alt has introduced a redesign that features a renewed focus on the magazine's status as the only Vogue title that represents a city, not a nation. "It's the concept of the 'Parisienne.'" she said. "The 'Parisienne' is a girl who makes people dream worldwide, rightly or wrongly — a girl who represents a particular style, a taste, an allure." [WWD]
  

• "Ultimately, shoes are just a really fun mode of escapism for a woman," said Man Repeller Leandra Medine on a tour of her shoe closet. "The higher the heel, the more fantasy is put into the shoe." [Footwear News]
  

• Louis Vuitton cast Michael Phelps — now the world's most decorated Olympian — in its newest ad campaign, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. [Just Jared]
  

• Meanwhile, Chanel Iman is the face of Amazon's Fall 2012 campaign, seen below. [Modelinia]
  

• New York Magazine's fashion blog today debuted a new look that takes "a cue from the beauty of print fashion magazines with a totally new design." [The Cut]
  

• Choupette Lagerfeld is quickly gaining a name for herself in the modeling industry. "I think she has a very bright future," says V magazine editor Sarah Cristobal, who cast the cat in her September issue alongside Laetitia Casta. "She's going to have an everlasting career." [BuzzFeed Shift]

Because the fascination with Karl Lagerfeld's cat Choupette needs as much attention as the pampered kitten herself, the Kaiser revealed a little more about her in an interview with Harper's Bazaar.

Choupette's two maids — who obsessively catalog her every move — the Chanel bag named for her, and her penchant for eating food at the table are by now common knowledge. But what the world didn't know until today is where Choupette's dishes come from and what kind of toys she favors. Those tidbits and more below.

On her general temperament: "She has an attitude like a princess."

On her eating habits: "She goes in the kitchen and sits in front of the food. She doesn't like to eat on the floor, so I have to put the food on the table. Her dishes are by Goyard. She has one for water, one for her little croquette, and one for her paté. You have to serve everything, and she makes a choice."

On her toys: "She likes strange toys, toys that aren't supposed to be toys. She plays with pieces of wood, pieces of paper, shopping bags. She loves shopping bags . . . her favorite one is a huge Colette shopping bag that's under the kitchen table. She spends hours in there and brings all her toys in there. And when I'm in bed, sometimes she comes and brings all her toys in my bed."

On whether Choupette meows or purrs: "No, no, no — everything is done with the eyes. She knows exactly what she wants."

Perhaps it's due to the Chanel bag that bears her name, or the parody Twitter account dedicated to her daily life, but Karl Lagerfeld now thinks his 1-year-old cat Choupette is more notorious than he is.

"You know, personally, I don't even think that I'm famous," said Lagerfeld in an interview with The Independent. "Now, Choupette really is famous. She has become the most famous cat in the world. I even get propositioned by pet food companies and things like that but it's out of the question. I'm commercial. She's not. She's spoiled to death. Obviously."

In the past, Lagerfeld has revealed that Choupette refuses to eat on the ground and has two maids who chronicle all the quotidian details of her life. Choupette even flies in the cockpit of Lagerfeld's private plane because "she loves looking at the sky." When Lagerfeld travels without Choupette — as he did recently to celebrate the launch of his eponymous collection at Selfridges in London — he's careful not to stay away from home too long.

"Choupette waits for me at the front door," he said. "She doesn't like being alone. She gets moody."

Source: Twitter User VMagazine

Those stories and more here, in our daily report.

• Rihanna may look super svelte on the cover of Harper's Bazaar's August 2012 issue, but she says she misses a certain, ahem, asset. "I miss my ass. It just went away! I need a butt. I have an idea of one, but it's not living up to its full potential right now," the newly size-zero singer says. The issue hits newsstands July 17. [Fashionologie Inbox]
  

• Karl Lagerfeld's latest muse Choupette already has a bag named after her — and soon she'll make her modeling debut as well. The kitten will appear alongside Laetitia Casta in an upcoming issue of V. [Fashionista]
  

• Speaking of muses, Arizona Muse stars with actor Caleb Landry in G-Star's Fall 2012 campaign. Photographer Anton Corbijn shot the duo in the frosty heights of the French Alps. [Style.com]
  

• Eco maven Livia Firth has designed a sustainably conscious capsule collection. The five-piece assortment will be available on her Yooxygen-powered site Eco-Age.com and comprises an organic wool dress, a hand-embroidered pashmina, a hand-crafted necklace, and two cloche hats. [Telegraph UK]
  

• In other partnership news, Leandra Medine has teamed with French brand Maje to design and install an exclusive window display for the brand's New York SoHo boutique. The creation will debut July 17. [Fashionologie Inbox]
  

• Last time it was tennis; now it's swimming. In the latest video campaign for her line Under.Me, Bar Refaeli shows off a new batch of cotton tees and thongs whilst taking a nice leisurely dip — and wearing black-rimmed reading glasses. [Modelinia]

Talk about cat fancy: Karl Lagerfeld has reportedly named a Chanel handbag after his kitten Choupette.

Cathy Horyn tweeted yesterday that she "just saw the Choupette bag in the studio at Chanel. Knitted, soft. Name of Karl's cat." Not long after that tweet was sent, Lagerfeld staged his Fall 2012 Couture show for Chanel, during which many of the models carried soft, knitted handbags accented by metal chains. Were they the same ones that Horyn mentioned?

Choupette became an Internet sensation after Lagerfeld tweeted a picture (seen at left) of her playing with an iPad in May. Last month the designer said in an interview that Choupette refuses to eat on the ground and has two maids who keep a detailed diary of her daily activities that is now over 600 pages long. The parody Twitter account @ChoupettesDiary offers an imaginary accounting of the 9-month-old kitten's day-to-day life, but so far it has offered no comment on the Choupette bag.

Photo: A model carries a soft, knitted handbag during the Chanel Fall 2012 Couture show.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Christy Turlington's style has gotten a lot simpler since her days on the catwalk. "I used to attempt to keep up with everything going on in the fashion world, but it was never my nature to do so," she said. "My style motto is less is more." [CelebStyle]
  

• Lanvin has launched a mobile version of its ecommerce site that's compatible with iPhone and iPad. Now those midday urges to buy a Lanvin minaudière, like the one above, can be settled between text messages. [WWD]
  

• Adriana Lima, Gisele Bundchen, and Lea T will make appearances in the upcoming Brazil-themed issue of Visionaire. The 62nd edition of the quarterly fashion publication will also feature 3D images photographed by Karl Lagerfeld, Solve Sundsbo, and Eli Sudbrack, among others. [Made in Brazil]
  

• Karl Lagerfeld's famously pampered kitten Choupette is the subject of a new parody Twitter account. @ChoupettesDiary recounts the fictional quotidian details and musings of the kitten who really does have two maids. Example: "Tonight's Plan: meow mercilessly until Daddy forks over $80,000 so I can attend the SJP, Anna Wintour, Obama dinner." [@ChoupettesDiary]
  

• Paul Smith — or Sir Paul Smith, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on — explained that the secret to his success has been to not focus on success: "Keep your feet on the ground, understand your trade, live within your means, and grow carefully," the designer said. [Oki-Ni]
  

• Ann Mashburn (wife of noted Atlanta menswear retailer Sid Mashburn) said her wedding dress — created by designer, not politician, David Cameron — was "absolutely perfect." So perfect, in fact, that she "just couldn't bear to take it off." Said Mashburn, "Sid fell asleep on the eve of our wedding waiting for me to change out of it." [Racked]