Milk Studios

>> MAC & Milk, the downtown centralized New York Fashion Week venue alternative to Lincoln Center, is expanding its venue offering as it heads into its fourth season. Until this season, all shows have been centralized in the Milk Studios building, but through a partnership with The Standard Hotel, MAC & Milk will have a satellite venue at the hotel's High Line Room in the Meatpacking District, set to be used by up and coming designer labels like Study NY, Bensoni, and Honor.

“We have a new lineup with some new designers, as well as a satellite operation at the Standard Hotel for presentations and shows, including some new emerging designers, which is a new dimension,” John Demsey, group president of Estee Lauder and MAC, said. “We have expanded the geographical territory of using the Meatpacking District.” Mazdack Rassi, creative director of Milk Studios, added: “It’s a community idea as well."

MAC & Milk is working on 20 Lincoln Center shows, 39 staged at MAC & Milk, and 32 off-site shows in total for the Fall 2011 season. And there may be even more big changes by next season — IMG Fashion, which currently has a five year contract to host Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, is rumored to be in talks with MAC & Milk about a partnership that would see IMG help run MAC & Milk in future seasons. Both MAC & Milk and IMG declined comment on the matter.

Montauk hangout Surf Lodge pops up at Milk Studios during fashion week, serving teas, vapor waters, and Bloody Marys. The wait staff will be outfitted in custom Loomstate apparel.

Olivier Theyskens will not be entering a new retail venture with Christopher Burch, as previously reported.

As fashion week begins and our eyes are bombarded with unattainable bodies, Crystal Renn will be on ABC's Nightline discussing her happier, healthier model story.

When Sandra Bullock wears a gown on the red carpet, it sells. Carey Mulligan not so much.

Giorgio Aramani launches a new digital home for his seven brands, which hosts company news, shopping links, and a new twitter account.

19-year-old Emma Watson is not only the face of Burberry, she's just been named the highest paid actress in Hollywood.

>> Soon after Maybelline announced it would be be taking over from five-year Bryant Park cosmetics sponsor MAC, MAC — presumedly, as New York Times' Eric Wilson put it, tired of having to share "a rather circuslike stage with other sponsors who were competing for attention, sometimes including makers of doughnuts, cameras, toilets and Big Macs" — announced that it would be producing the tentatively-titled MAC and Milk Fashion Week with Milk Studios at the same time as the traditional New York Fashion Week.

The event can be seen as either a complement or a competitor to Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, but on the record, anyway, there seem to be no hard feelings.  Milk Studios founder Mazdack Rassi says of the initiative: "This week is not an alternative show space, it's a way of cultivating designers and helping them come up with new ways of selling their clothes."  And Zach Eichman, a VP of IMG Fashion, which produces the shows at Bryant Park, told the New York Times last week the company welcomed the MAC and Milk event and that bus service between shows would be available when possible. “We can’t do every show in the tents. We hope they will be successful.”

Alexander Wang will be there, so will Preen »