Things just get better and better for fashion designer Derek Lam. In July, Lam sold a majority stake in his label right before the market collapsed, he's now at work on his first freestanding store in SoHo, and he continues to earn praise as creative director of Tod's. Plus, he just got back to town after a blissful Thanksgiving weekend spent on the beach in Turks and Caicos, which means he's well-rested. And now he has a new weekend home, too. Lam and his longtime partner, Jan-Hendrik Schlottman, have paid $2.15 million for a three-bedroom, oceanfront home—with pool and hot tub, of course—on Ocean Walk in the Fire Island Pines.

Harvey Weinstein is the co-founder of the Weinstein Company, the struggling studio that has produced very few hits over the past year, has seen a handful of senior of execs flee for the exits in recent weeks, and has been immersed in a nasty legal spat with NBC over the fate of his one big hit, Project Runway, over the past few months. (Further evidence of his financial woes: He owes Cindy Adams $10,000 and has refused to pay up.) Lev Leviev might be a less familiar name to you. He's the Ubekistan-born, Orthodox Jewish diamond and real estate billionaire who lives in Israel and controls the Africa-Israel Group, which dominates the diamond mining industry in Angola and owns a good deal of real estate, too, including the former headquarters of the New York Times.

The New York iteration of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrated its opening last night with a party in the new SoHo space. Attendees like Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and Theodora Richards (left) mingled with Taylor Momsen, Molly Sims, Matthew Modine, Ciara, David Foote, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Liz Lange, and Ryan Locke, listened to performances by Debbie Harry and Dave Mason, and inked their names on a plywood wall. [Paper, Wireimage, PMc, GoaG]

If you enjoy outrageous tales of imposters charming their way into high society—and you happen to have an hour or so to spare—Mark Seal's exposé on con man (and alleged kidnapper) Clark Rockefeller for the January issue of Vanity Fair is now online. [VF]

It's not all doom and gloom on Wall Street! You'll be happy to hear that Credit Suisse's annual Christmas party is still taking place next week. [Dealbreaker]

Ever wonder what Jocelyne Wildenstein would look like without the browlifts, facelifts, blepharoplasty, canthopexy, and Botox? Or if it were possible to turn undo all the work that has paid for more than a few East Hampton homes for plastic surgeons on the Upper East Side? Now you can! [YouTube via APS]

♦ Time Out New York is now up for sale for $40 million. [Times UK]
♦ A major reorganization at Random House was announced today by the company's new CEO, Markus Dohle. [NYO]
♦ Simon & Schuster is laying off 35 people. [Gawker]
♦ NBC appears to have settled on David Gregory as the new host of Meet the Press, but the network has yet to finalize the deal. [NYT]
♦ Tina Fey didn't get a $5 million book deal. It was $6.9 million. [NYP]
♦ Are you an unemployed writer? Get in touch with Tina Brown! [NYO]
♦ Miles O'Brien is departing CNN. [TVN]

So there won't be so many wealthy bankers as usual at the Miami Art Basel this week. But people can at least expect to see lots of top execs and clients of the fair's sponsor, Swiss banking giant UBS, right? Sadly for already-despondent artists and dealers, it looks like a few of them may be well-advised to stay away, too: The FBI is reportedly heading down to Miami to mount a sting operation to ensnare a certain breed of tax-evader: Those for whom art collecting is a convenient method of surreptitiously moving vast sums of cash around, and if you have an anonymous Swiss bank account, even better!

Leave it to the Fox Business Channel to figure out a way to tie the Plaxico Burress brouhaha to the economy at large, but the network managed to pull off just such a feat yesterday when a business reporter turned up to list off 5 people who shot themselves in the foot over the past year. Coming in at No. 5 on the list: Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman, who made the list for the lavish 60th birthday party he held last year, not surprisingly. "This guy is crazy!" the reporter explains to anchor David Asman when he asks why Schwarzman made the list.

Citigroup isn't the only financial services company seeking to sell off its lavish corporate jets as the economy heads south. We've learned that the insurance giant Travelers (which, coincidentally, was once part of Citigroup) is heading down precisely the same path and put its Dassault Falcon 900C up for sale in just the last couple of weeks. The price? It's listed for $27.5 million, although keep in mind that it comes with "custom-patterned carpets" and the interior is finished with black nickel. The jet is currently located at Connecticut's Bradley International Airport and a local brokerage, Guardian Jet, LLC, is handling the sale. You can see what $27.5 million gets you—and read about how many satellite phones and microwave ovens come with the purchase—after the jump.

Sarah Jessica Parker and son James surveying Christmas trees in the West Village ... John Mayer leaving Sony's offices on Madison and 55th ... Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and Suri getting out of an SUV outside their apartment ... Kate Winslet walking into the "Times Talks" event on West 41st Street ... Michelle Williams and Spike Jonze holding hands outside the Gotham Independent Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street ... Britney Spears heading into her birthday party at Tenjune, and Alessandra Ambrosio leaving the party a few hours later... and Peaches Geldof wrapping her face in a scarf to avoid having a photographer take her pic.

Dressing Michelle Obama for her husband's inauguration on January 20th will be one lucky fashion designer's dream come true: As images of the Obamas are beamed to every corner of the globe, her outfit will become instantly iconic. A long list of famous designers submitted sketches to WWD of the dresses they'd like to create for Mrs. O, and we're guessing they all spent a good deal of time thinking through every last detail. One thorny matter they all seemed to struggle with: what color to depict Michelle's skin. As you'll see from the gallery above (click here for a larger pic), some designers, like Monique Lhuillier and Rachel Roy, opted to entirely side-step the historic fact that our new First Lady will be African-American by not breaking out the brown pencil at all. A couple of people, including Carolina Herrera, contented themselves with a few vague tawny strokes, while others (Lacroix, for example) were apparently so delighted to finally get to use their darkest sketch marker that they went a little, um, overboard. One thing almost everyone agreed on, though? That Michelle has the waist of a 12-year-old girl.

Tragic news for loyal viewers of Regis & Kelly (and, perhaps, former patrons of Tampa's Stingers strip club, circa 1989): The new issue of the always-reliable National Enquirer reports that Kelly Ripa's marriage to Mark Consuelos is finished. [Jossip]

♦ Spanx CEO Sara Blakely and her husband, Marquis Jets co-founder Jesse Itzler (left), have gone into contract to sell their 14th-floor condo at 15 CPW, less than a year after they picked up the place from Smart Flyer owner Michael Holtz for $8.5 million. The pad was most recently listed at $9.85 million. [Cityfile]
♦ Morgan Stanley managing director Guy Metcalfe, who paid $9.35 million for a five-bedroom apartment at 15 CPW in October and then re-listed the spread for $16.5 million just two weeks later, has now dropped the asking price to $13.75 million. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
♦ Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy sold her 24th-floor apartment at 400 East 51st Street for $3.8 million to newly-appointed Novartis CEO Rober Pelzer. [NYO]

Ever wonder what time Donny Deutsch wakes up and goes to bed? Or what he eats for breakfast? Neither did we! But the folks at Success have compiled just about every Donny-related detail imaginable in the magazine's December cover story. (For the record, he goes to sleep at 11:30 and gets up at 7:30am, and has "breakfast an hour later at a nearby restaurant, where six egg whites with American cheese await him.") Also? He's partial to Earnest Sewn jeans and Gucci loafers, but you probably could have guessed that one. [Success]

Remember Tricia Walsh-Smith, the former wife of theater mogul Philip Smith, and the woman who became an internet sensation when she took to YouTube to recount her messy divorce and her former husband's fondness for Viagra and porn movies? Tricia came to mind when we read the news last night that Philip Smith was named the new chairman of the Shubert Organization, "perhaps the single most powerful position in the theatrical world." The promotion suggests the tabloid frenzy earlier this year didn't put much of a dent in Smith's professional rep, something he was clearly concerned about when the couple appeared in court this summer. (The judge said Tricia's YouTube videos represented "a calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband.") But we thought we'd check in with Tricia and gather her thoughts on her ex-husband's big promotion. Here's what she had to say via email a few moments ago.

The eternally youthful Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto turns 53 today. Happy birthday, Michael. Julianne Moore is celebrating, too: She's 48. Actor Brendan Fraser is turning 40. Daryl Hannah is turning 48. Legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is 78. Last but not least, the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, is 60 today.

♦ Hockey star/former Vogue intern Sean Avery was suspended from the NHL indefinitely yesterday following "inappropriate public comments" about ex-girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert. "It's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds," he said referring to Cuthbert's relationship with fellow hockey player Dion Phaneuf. [NYP]
♦ Britney Spears celebrated her birthday and album release yesterday by lip-synching her way through a performance on GMA and then heading off to Tenjune, where she partied with the likes of Heidi Klum and Lance Bass. The comeback may be short-lived: She's still abusing prescription drugs and is "plagued by insomnia and shaking fits," at least according to the Star. [The Sun, ThisIsLondon, Star]
♦ Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy Winehouse's estranged husband, just got out of prison. But now it looks like a return trip is in store. [Mirror, Daily Mail]

♦ Detroit's Big Three automakers presented new turnaround plans (and their request for $34 billion) to Congress yesterday. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ Merrill Lynch plans to cut year-end bonuses in half. [Bloomberg]
♦ Now that it's turned itself into a commercial bank, Goldman Sachs is thinking about starting an online banking operation, too. [DB]
♦ Goldman is tapping Gerald Corrigan, a former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to serve as chairman of its bank holding company. [FT]
♦ Billionaire financier face-off: One of Carl Icahn's companies is suing a firm owned by Leon Black. [NYT, NYP]
♦ Ramius Capital, the struggling hedge fund operated by Peter Cohen, is closing four of its funds. [WSJ]

A whopping 37,000 New York City residents have a license to own or carry a gun, according to the Times. (One notable person not on the list: Plaxico Burress.) Subtract out the people who are either cops or security guards and there are still some 17,000 people who have the right to bear arms. Not including those of us who happen to keep unlicensed Kalashnikov assault rifles under our beds, of course. [City Room]