>> It's been an odd Fashion Week without Carine Roitfeld's impeccable style or Tanya Dziahileva's cherubic face, but another person of note was missed — on the runways, anyway — Irina Lazareanu.  She's been spotted at Monday's Vogue/Cole Haan party in Missoni, yesterday's V magazine party in a sequined top, denim cutoffs, and a feather, and also yesterday, front row at 3.1 Phillip Lim.

Sitting front row isn't a new thing for Irina — she was in row one last season at Erin Fetherston — but what is new?  For the first time in three years, she's taking a break from the runway: "To be honest, I wanted to take a season off." But just in New York — she will be walking "a little" in Milan in Paris.
*image: source, source

>> Those July 2008 Vogue Italia shockwaves keep on resonating: Black models are covering POP Fall 2008, Harper's Bazaar September 2008, and now Jourdan Dunn shows up on i-D September 2008, photographed by Emma Summerton.  Even V 55 is rumored to be a Naomi Campbell extravaganza.  Speaking of Naomi, how much does Jourdan call to mind the supermodel on this cover and in the accompanying "Welcome to the witching hour" editorial?
*image: source

>> The pictures that had everyone gossiping in early April — you know the ones — of Gisele in derriere-bearing ripped jeans, makeup artist James Kaliardos applying lotion, have finally appeared in finished form.  Leave it to Mario Testino to fashion three full V 54 covers and an editorial out of trashtastic shredded denim, skimpy metallic bikinis, and of course, Gisele.

In fact, Gisele blames Mario for the clothes (or lack thereof).

"Only Mario [Testino] could make me take those pictures. Ah! The only person that can get me to do stuff like this is Mario. You know what he’s like . . ."

As for those paparazzi pictures, they spoiled the shoot within minutes.

"I have never seen anything like this — after four minutes, Mario’s assistant yells, 'Cover her!' We look back and these guys have lenses this long. They looked like telescopes. There were fifty of them . . . We got there and it was empty — I’m looking at the camera and James [Kaliardos] is putting cream on [my bottom] and everyone is doing their job — and then I scream! So Mario refused to shoot on the beach, they put a robe on me and we went back up the mountain."

Gisele doesn't see what the big deal is about a little derriere.

"You know, people are going to say my butt is showing too much in these — but, I’m sorry, my butt showed more in Victoria’s Secret. For seven years my butt was in every catalog. It’s hypocrisy: those [paparazzi] pictures ran everywhere, and everyone was talking about my butt. This is V Magazine—if you’re going to do something like that, you do it for V."

She hates gossip so much, she doesn't even have a publicist.

"I’ve been a model for ten years and . . . I am the only person I know that does not have [a publicist]. Do you know why? Because I don’t want them to talk about me. For my job I need an agent. Where am I going? What time is my flight? Who am I working with? That’s what I need to know. I have nothing to say to people who gossip about me."

Gisele wants you to think about the bigger picture.

"I paid for a study about violence that is being edited into a book at the end of the year; we researched for three and a half years with fifty sociologists. While everyone is going around saying crazy things about my life I’m concerned with the destruction of our planet. Why don’t they talk about that? Or, forget about what I’m doing altogether, why don’t they talk about what’s going on in the environment in these magazines?"

Full gallery (NSFW) below.