• A camera crew followed Rachel Zoe around during Paris Fashion Week, which means the second season of her Bravo reality show is headed your way. [FWD]
• Dov Charney's cash-strapped American Apparel is selling 18 percent of the company to a private equity firm to pay down some of its debt. [BN]
• The hat Aretha Franklin wore to the inauguration in January? More than 5,000 orders have been placed since then. At $179 a pop, no less. [NYT]
• Video of Karl Lagerfeld at Paris Fashion Week. [NYM]
• What's Sofia Coppola up to these days? She's directing perfume ads for Dior, that's what. [NYT/The Moment]
• Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone are on their way to Brazil for a little post-fashion season R&R, in case you're interested. [FWD]
• LA Fashion Week begins tonight! [Racked, Stylefile]

You might think that American Apparel would thrive in the recession, with their affordable clothes and dirtbag-embracing ads. But you'd be wrong, since an investor just rescued them from defaulting on a loan.

It's probably safe to assume that Amy Odell, the editor of New York magazine's fashion blog, The Cut, won't be on the guest list for Lauren Santo Domingo's Christmas party this year. Late yesterday, Odell posted a scathing critique of the socialite, Vogue contributing editor, and wife of Colombian heir Andres Santo Domingo. Why? It seems Santo Domingo couldn't get her hands on a pair of black $1,800 Hussein Chalayan boots that have been all the rage recently. So she did what any other dedicated fashionista would do: She took a pair of similar boots in brown and customized them to look just like the Chalayan ones. Vogue posted Santo Domingo's tale of "fashion dedication" online; Odell responded by suggesting Santo Domingo wasn't "important enough" to get her hands on the genuine article, and said her effort to recreate them was something that "no one with a real job would ever have the time, money, or energy to even think about doing." Totally true! The problem is that not long after, New York removed any trace of the story from its website. Did Vogue put pressure on New York to remove the offending piece? Did Anna bitch Adam out? Hard to say! An email to Odell asking for an explanation went unanswered. But we saved a cached version for you, which you can read here.

• Paris Fashion Week came to a conclusion today with a memorable show by John Galliano and Marc Jacobs' collection for Louis Vuitton, which, shockingly, only started seven minutes late. [NYT, Telegraph, WWD, WSJ]
• Want to see Project Runway return to the air? Heidi Klum suggests demonstrating outside Harvey Weinstein's house. Good idea![MSNBC]
• Retailers are pushing designers to reduce costs in the hopes consumers can be convinced to pay full-price again. [WSJ]
• Heard on the Runway, the Journal's fashion blog, may be over. [NYM]
• The Jonas Brothers are launching a clothing line. Sweet! [Racked]
• Zooey Deschanel has debuted her sunglasses line for Oliver Peoples. [NYDN]
• Shepard Fairey is crafting Saks' new ad campaign. [FWD]
• Need some couture for your dog? Here are some places to start. [Pipeline]

It's Fashion Week in gay Paris! Making it, you know, even more gay. The event always showcases the wildest of modern garments, so we've put together a gallery of some of our favorites. Bon Appetit!

At fashion shows the world over, buyers and journalists are sending their regrets. There are fewer million- and billion-aire customers to invite. Time to pack the house with freeloaders and other undesirables!

• The recession ain't stopping Marc Jacobs: He's opening seven new boutiques this year. [WWD]
• Alexander McQueen stunned crowds at Paris Fashion Week with a collection that "oozed with imagination," but was "plenty unsettling," too. [IHT, WWD]
• Reviews from some of the other shows in Paris the past couple of days. [NYT, WSJ, Vogue UK]
• Détente! Anti-fur crusader (and PETA honcho) Dan Mathews was spotted shaking hands with none other than Anna Wintour. [NYP]
• Apparently the economy is forcing women to rush over to consignment shops to sell their "beloved Louis Vuittons at pennies on the dollar." [NYP]
• J. Crew is thinking of opening a bridal salon. [Racked]
• You can credit Twilight for boosting sales at Hot Topic. [NYM]
• Neiman Marcus reported that sales dropped 21% last quarter. [Reuters]
• A peek at a new collection by Kimberly Ovitz, daughter of Michael. [Pipeline]
• At John Galliano's show in Paris, "toxic" fake snow had editors like Hamish Bowles, Grace Coddington, and Glenda Bailey most unhappy. [Fashionologie]

• The Chanel show at Paris Fashion Week was just as chaotic as it was expected to be. Photographers ended up in a scuffle when Kate Moss turned up and part of the set broke. [NYT, WSJ, NYT, WWD, Telegraph, Guardian]
• Roberto Cavalli has branched out into petwear. He's selling dildos now, too, apparently. [FWD, FWD]
• Earnest Sewn's Scott Morrison and Eleanor Ylvisaker have left the company. [WWD, FWD]
• An Italian fashion website tried to tape an interview with Anna Wintour three times during Milan Fashion Week. Denied each time! [Fashionologie]

It seems bling lives on, no matter what Karl Lagerfeld has to say about it. Or imitation bling, at least. Just $4.90 at H&M! [Racked]

• Lindsay Lohan's self-tanning mist, Sevin Nyne, launches on April 15. And she even has an elaborate website set up to mark the big occasion. [NYM]
• Kanye, Pink, and Salma all turned out for the Stella McCartney show today. Kanye likes his coffee with "mad cream and sugar," on the off chance you were wondering. [WSJ, Telegraph, Fashionista]
• Quelle horreur! PETA activists tore Carine Roitfeld's Balenciaga gown outside the JPG show! [SF]
• Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel show takes place tomorrow. And everyone will be there, naturally. [NYT, Grazia]
• Yves Saint Laurent has turned its first profit in a decade. [FT]
• Reviews of some of the other shows at Paris Fashion Week. [NYT]
• It's looking likely that Peter Copping will take over at Nina Ricci. [Fashionista]
• Kate Moss will be in NYC for Topshop's opening on April 2. [DM]
• Conspicuous consumption is no longer cool, reports the Times, in the event you've missed the 2,243 articles on the same subject up 'til now. [NYT]

Anna Wintour has set a mythically high bar of imperious bitchitude for other fashion magazine editors to live up to, but no doubt Joanna Coles—the British editor of Marie Claire now familiar to reality TV viewers thanks to Running in Heels—would love to be talked about in the same tones of fear and awe. The quotes in this weekend's Daily Mail profile, therefore, must be music to her ears (if not actually written by her publicist). Coles, who's "said to make Wintour look like a warm-hearted pushover," apparently presides over an office "often in danger of drowning in a tidal wave of tears."

• Pamela Anderson hit the catwalk at Vivienne Westwood's show in Paris today. Her boob popped out of her dress at the very end, which was totally an accident, you can rest assured. [SW, HP]
• Reports from various shows at Paris Fashion Week. [WSJ, NYM, T, Telegraph]
• You can credit/blame Barack Obama's inauguration in January for the recent resurgence in fur. [WSJ]
• Michelle Obama is wearing Michael Kors for her new O cover. [Fashionista]
• Ikram Goldman, Michelle's fashion guru, is in Paris for the shows. [FWD]
• Madonna is teaming up with Ed Hardy on a new clothing line. [Mirror]
• What's it like to be Bernard Arnault, France's richest man and "arguably the most influential tastemaker in the world of luxury"? Quite nice, actually. [WSJ]
• Try not to fall out of your chair—we'd hate you to get hurt—but Esquire has named Prince Charles the "best dressed man in the world." [Guardian]

We cannot imagine why, but Paris authorities decided, of all the weeks in the year, to pick Fashion Week for a series of drug raids! Even more surprising, the chief executive of Elite Models' parent company Elite World, Bertrand Hennet, has been arrested for buying, possessing, and transporting cocaine. Police said that the 35-year-old "openly admitted that he had just bought £120 worth of cocaine, but consumed it before we got to him." The true mark of a dedicated junkie: When police are hammering at the door, don't throw your stash down the toilet, just snort it as quickly as possible!

Mickey Rourke had dinner at Nello last night. Probably hoping to evade paparazzi, the actor apparently threw on everything in the coat-check room before leaving.

• CBS's Morley Safer on following around Anna Wintour from Fashion Week in NYC to Milan and now to Paris: "It's only slightly less dangerous than covering wars... In Milan, it was about the same as covering Vietnam." [NYT]
• Reviews from the Balmain and Balenciaga shows at Paris Fashion Week. [Times UK, Telegraph]
• The end of an era: Olivier Theyskens showed off what was quite likely his last collection for Nina Ricci in Paris this evening. [WWD, WSJ]
• Gareth Pugh is planning to launch a line of shoes and makeup. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne reported a massive loss for the fourth quarter. [NYP]
• David's Bridal invaded Manhattan today. [Racked]
• Chanel Iman will join Bar Refaeli as host of MTV's new House of Style. [F'gie]

Even if you've never stopped to think about what the fashion director of a store actually does—they're not buyers, or merchandisers, or window dressers, or marketing execs, but sprinkle their oracular wisdom (shoulder pads: back! Heels: high! Hems: flouncy!) over all of these domains—you may still be taken aback to learn that this civilizing breed of person is endangered, bordering on, dare we say it, obsolete. Both Michael Fink of Saks and LaVelle Olexa of Lord & Taylor have been let go, neither to be replaced, and their counterparts at other stores must be wondering what the future holds. But who, or what, is to blame for this sad state of affairs? It practically goes without saying that it's those twin destroyers of culture: blogs and reality TV!

• Why do people like to watch models falling down? "Is it because us mere mortals love to take pleasure in seeing the beautiful go down? Is it fashion show turned fashion spectacle? Is it the same logic as watching a car crash?" Yes, yes, and yes. [Pipeline]
• Editors who turned up to Gareth Pugh's show in Paris were shown an 8-minute video instead of a runway show. The same one that appeared online. Surprise! [Fashionologie, Fashionista]
• Meet Ruth, Marc Jacobs's secret weapon on Bleecker Street. [Racked]
• Kenneth Cole cut 10 percent of his workforce last week. [Reuters]
• PETA's new anti-fur campaign features strippers. Classy. [Gawker]
• Lou Doillon is opening a concept store in Paris later this year. [Fashionista]
• Rebecca Taylor is introducing a line of shoes and jewelry. [FWD]
• Badgley Mischka's new ad campaign was shot by Annie Leibovitz and features Eva Longoria, Brooke Shields, Lauren Hutton and Anjelica Huston. [SW]
• What you can expect to see when Topshop finally opens on April 2. [NYM]

Hmm, we're no 'Mascara Marketing Guru' but we suspect that "Light up Your Eyes" is not the best tagline for a new ad starring Rihanna, who was recently beaten about the eye area.

Always on the phone... [DVF.com]

• No one seems to know why, but a model at the Jill Sander show in Milan appeared on the runway with tears streaming down her cheeks. A new trend? An allergic reaction of some sort? A reaction to the stress and anxiety hanging over the industry? You decide. [WSJ]
• Reviews and recaps of the recent runway shows in Milan. [NYT, IHT, Times UK]
• Barneys' makeup department seems to be holding up despite the recession. [NYT]
• The appointment of Dasha Zhukova as editor-in-chief of Pop is ruffling some feathers, not surprisingly. [Fashionologie]
• Michelle Obama went with Michael Kors for her official portrait. [WWD]
• A roundup of 10 trends from London Fashion Week. [Pipeline]
• The French magazine Femmes is relaunching and the new issue is devoted exclusively to Lydia Hearst, you'll be thrilled to hear. [Fashionista]