Joni Mitchell x New York Magazine

Gentleman of Fashion: Oscar de la Renta, Rest in Peace

NY Mag's The Cut Test Drives Fall Shoes

The good fashion girls of NY Mag's The Cut gives us their video Op-Ed on fall season's most talked about heels.

Be Real Louboutinmall.com

Thanks to The Cut (NYMag), because it is exactly what I am thinking. People .... if you can get a "luxury" item for less than $200 - it is not a luxury item.

NYMag - A reader wrote in to ask if we could verify the authenticity of sites like Louboutinmall.com, which sells shoes with red soles that they say are real Christian Louboutins. However, they sell them for $160. Louboutins never cost that little, even on sale. The shoes on the site look pretty fake, but just to be extra sure we asked the kind people over at Mr. Louboutin's house. A spokeswoman confirmed that sites like Louboutinmall.com sell fake Loubs. "This website in NOT affiliated with us in any shape or form," the spokeswoman said over e-mail. Louboutin's real website has a list of authorized Louboutin retailers. We hope these horrid fakes never make it to Canal Street.

Anna Wintour Says This About Her Job

From NYMag - In a rare public appearance, Anna Wintour spoke to Jonathan Tisch at the 92nd Street Y last night. Topics included how Vogue stays relevant in the recession and how to look good without spending a lot of money. Fur might not have come up had the members of PETA in the audience not interrupted. "This woman skins animals alive!" they shouted. As they tossed a banner over the balcony and called Wintour a shame, the editor's expression was a mix of polite restraint and Is there no security in this place? Drowning out the sounds of the chant "Fur Shame! Fur Shame!", an audience member yelled, "I love you, Anna!" to booming applause. Wintour looked her hecklers in the eyes and said, "Fur is still a part of fashion, so Vogue will continue to report on it." When 92Y staff removed the animal rights radicals from the room, Wintour joked, "As I was saying, fashion means different things to different people." Read on for some highlights from the discussion, including why Michelle Obama matters and who will land on next month's cover.

You've said it's time to move on from a job when you get too angry. Are you getting to the point where you're thinking about other options?
Well, mostly I'm thinking about the next day. I think that I have the best job in the entire world. To be honest, I don't think I'd be very good at anything else!

How are you keeping Vogue current at this moment?
You have to remember exactly who you are and not panic. I don't think that Vogue should turn into Recession Weekly. But at the same time, I think that we have to be very aware of what's going on in the world. In terms of our fashion choices ... racks and racks of clothes are wheeled into my office, and we discuss what's going to be in the magazine and what's not. And up until a year ago, we've been very free about the prices of clothes, and I probably didn't delve as deeply as I should have into what things cost. Now I ask the price of every single outfit that comes into the office, and I think a lot of my editors have been quite surprised about what a little sequin dress from an unnamed designer might be, and if it's $25,000, we'll say, ‘Okay, well, not this time.’ So we're looking at that, and at supporting younger designers — like Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler — that are more price-friendly ... But at the same time, we are who we are. We represent the fashion industry, and we have to show the best in the fashion industry, and that's not going to change.

What went into putting Michelle Obama on the cover?
She emerged during the campaign as this enigmatic and strong woman with such great personal style. I think at the beginning, she had quite a hard time capturing the hearts of America, and it was interesting to all of us to see how that changed ... Mrs. Obama loves fashion. She isn't, like some people in Washington, frightened of it. She believes, as we do at Vogue, that to be an independent, working woman doesn't mean that you have to walk around with a brown paper bag on … We always felt that Washington rather looked down on us or didn't understand us or wasn't quite ready for us, and now we have an administration that supports us.

What is the role of a fashion editor today?
There's so much media coverage on fashion today from all sides. Our job is to really dig through all that and help our readers make choices and explain what we're seeing. Right now, there's almost too much information on fashion — I'm confused!

How do you go about hiring people for Vogue?
I really hire on instinct, and I look for people who are going to disagree with me. I think personalities like André Leon Talley and Hamish Bowles are really important to the magazine. Some people talk about lots of market research, but I've never really believed in that.

Of course you want more, go here.

New York I Love You

God, I love New York.


Lauren Hutton, actress
Arrived: 1964
"I came to New York for two things: to get to Africa and to find LSD. In those days it was legal. You could get it from this Swiss chemical company, and I met six guys who were very willing to give it to me. But I didn’t like any of them enough to take it, so it took me a few months. As for Africa, I was supposed to meet a friend in New York, and we were going to take a tramp steamer to Tangier. It was going to cost $140. Once I got there, my plan was to take a bus for ten cents to the outskirts of town and see elephants and rhinoceroses and giraffes. I was as ignorant as a telephone pole.

In any case, the friend didn’t show up. I don’t think I ever found out what happened to her. I waited for two hours at Idlewild and then took a bus to the Port Authority. I was going through the bus terminal, and I was 21 and these very strangely dressed young black guys were following me and saying these weird things. And I thought, Uh-oh. I didn’t realize they were pimps, but I knew it was bad. So I panicked and got into a cab. When the cabbie asked me where to go, I didn’t know. Then I remembered Tiffany’s. I’d heard of Tiffany’s. And I knew the corner of 57th and Fifth. So I said, “57th and Fifth! Tiffany’s!”

Click here to read more from Chloe Sevigny, Diane Von Furstenberg, Cindy Sherman, Andy Sandberg and others take a walk through a New York City memory bliss. And speaking of the best city ever, when, when will this already beautiful movie ever come out?

I WANT NAMES

"As we continue to decompress from the glamour and glitz of last week, we're left wondering what ever did happen with the ticket scammery going on with the shows. As it turns out, while everyone else in the tents was busy preening and BlackBerrying, one savvy publicist from BPCM was fighting crime. Well, sort of: The publicist, who wishes to remain anonymous, tipped us off to two of the shady dealers who were selling "tickets" to the shows. (Silly scammers: They're called invites and they’re non-negotiable. That's your first mistake.)

To recap: There was the midwestern mom and her tween daughter who said they paid $12,000 for an all-inclusive Fashion Week package courtesy of Fashion Ledge, an online "magazine" whose landing page is like a mock-up for a pretend magazine (and is WELL worth checking out) — all airbrushed boobs and sad cover lines like, “Rocawear boots” and “How to shave your man for Valentine’s.” Shudder. According to the BPCM publicist who had to deal with them when they showed up at Erin Fetherston, the Midwesterners' spiel was something like, "We're not on the list and we're not supposed to say our real names, but we're with Fashion Ledge." Yeah, that's what you think, tourists. The publicist, realizing the two had been duped, took pity on them and let them sit at the show. The next day at Tadashi Shoji (another BPCM client), a different victim was stopped at the door — she claimed her invitation originally belonged to one “Yvette Coleman,” who happens to be listed as the fashion-and-beauty editor of Fashion Ledge. Coleman, with her husband, also runs a casting agency called Silver Poses." .... read more