As this season's Project Runway contestants are all mincing bores, let's turn to someone more interesting and likable from last season: Christian Siriano. His collection for BlueFly, commissioned as a prize for winning the show, debuts today. It is small, black, and super expensive. Like a first generation iPhone. The coup de grâce, really, is the $96 t-shirt. Honestly the whole thing is a little bit... ffumpf. Whatever that means. See the rest of it after the jump.

Nike's new ad campaign for its Hyperdunk shoes features a series of pictures of basketball players getting dunked on in what's considered the worst way possible: the dunker dangling off the rim, his balls dangling in the face of the man being dunk-ee. They all have dynamic slogans like "That Ain't Right!" The company has been plastering them around NYC's most famous streetball meccas, like Harlem (home to The Rucker) and West 4th St. Their rollout coincides with a big foofaraw this week (which some critics say is stupid oversensitivity) over whether the ad industry is making blatantly homophobic ads. All of which raises the question: Are these Nike ads a new low in homophobic advertising? Or do the gays just not understand basketball?

The Obama campaign instructed staffers not to wear the color green during the Democratic candidate's trip to the Middle East. "An Obama aide explained to reporters that green is the color associated with the militant Palestinian group Hamas." Apparently, crescent-shaped croissants may be next. [Politico]

Oh, New York Times "T" fashion magazine: we will never understand you. We know the glossy mag brings in a ton of advertising dollars for the paper. But beyond that, its editorial mission is too rarefied for us to grasp. There's the odd indie rock fashion spread or child porn dustup, but what for? Today we were informed by a marketing person that the magazine has launched a series of celebrity "screen test" videos on its website. As far as we can tell, they're the first people to succeed in editing a five-minute long Will Ferrell interview in such a way that it is not funny at all. Beyond that, we're not sure what they were trying to accomplish. Watch the clip below, and take your own guess:

The notorious, mysterious, and sexy American Apparel ad spoofer raises so many philosophical questions: What is art? What is advertising? What is porn? And does showing blowjobs count as "sexual equality?" The spoofer has a long history of drawing female genitalia (and dildos). But now he or she has made the leap to showing penises for the cause-something Dov Charney can only dream of. Click through for the most overt (possibly NSFW, although it's just a drawing) example:

Nina Garcia, the erstwhile Project Runway judge and former Elle fashion director, is truly a force of nature. We told you last week that during her final months at Elle, Garcia was getting paid a hefty fee for making public appearances for Anne Klein. But a source tells us that the Anne Klein endorsement, an angry publisher, and Garcia's own strange sense of ethics helped get her booted from Elle in the first place!

Metro, the free paper best known for causing track fires on the NYC subways, ran a cover story yesterday that is totally indefensible, even by the lowly journalism standards of free morning papers. Radar spotted it: a front page splash about an innocent grad student girl who was supposedly attacked by four wild young black females because she was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan, "OBAMA IS MY SLAVE." The paper's one and only source? The untalented media whore designer who sold the mystery girl the shirt. (We would feel dirty giving him more PR than necessary, but it was this prick). But guess what, Metro: we got that press release too. And if this whole story isn't a hoax, I will personally buy one of those shitty shirts.

Kenneth Cole is not just a middling designer and outspoken advocate for responsible journalism; he's also, for reasons we can't fathom (narcissism), his own advertising copywriter. A bad advertising copywriter. It's not every CEO of a massive fashion brand that's too cheap to hire someone to write his own billboard taglines. But in Kenneth Cole's case, coming up with them only robs him of mere seconds of thought. That's how his poor clothing line ends up with billboards like this one on Houston St.—presumably the balls are there to distract you from the slogan itself:

The New York Times is upset with Madonna or something. In an article today they moan about her increasing fashion irrelevance and demand to know what "look" the singer/actress/A-Rod diddler's new album, Hard Candy, is promoting. Is it boxer-chic? Are we really supposed to be wearing that thick belt? Answers! We need answers! Madge has been one of our most important sartorial sherpas over the past 25 years, they keen. Remember Suddenly Desperately Seeking Susan, where she was all boho ripped up plastic shit and pantyhose? That totally ruled! But now her new stylist, the cryptically-named B., has totally ruined her. Except, you know, Madonna's given us a lot and maybe it's time to let her go.

Vogue has always acted disdainful of reality television. When it became clear the fashion title had passed on something big with Project Runway, Vogue editor Anna Wintour sniffed that her magazine "is not in the business of making entertainment out of the struggles of new designers." Fine. How, then, to explain Vogue's seeming reversal, its participation in an online reality show about the travails of three young models? With denial. "This isn't a reality show," cries the trailer. Other shows are "just amateurs live" Vogue publisher Tom Florio told the Wall Streer Journal, while this one is co-produced by modeling agency IMG, which makes it totally legitimate. The show's tagline is more honest, but still rubbishes the rest of the genre: "Reality TV just got real." Well, at least someone has. Preview video after the jump.

It must really kill Dov Charney not to be able to advertise his hipster robot clothes via hardcore porn movies starring himself and a bevy of 18-year-old Eastern European beauties recently unloaded from a shipping crate in the dead of night. So the pervy American Apparel CEO and hero to the downtrodden keeps edging as close to that vision as possible. His latest effort: a foreign ad featuring a model licking some dude's boxer shorts-and some believe the dude in them is Dov himself, based solely on the hairy legs. Full ad that will haunt you, below:

Lovers of moguls and fashion house revivals pay heed: Halston, the 70s luxury brand that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is attempting to restore to its former glory, has lost its creative director! Marco Zanini, who came to Halston from Versace a year ago to revive the brand, has reportedly been shown the door. Apparently he didn't have the "sexual charge" that Weinstein craves. Don't worry Harvey, you still have Project Runway!

A-list stars are extremely selective about how they're portrayed in pictures. They routinely have specific language in their contracts for movies and photo shoots dictating just how much flesh can be shown, and in what way. But magazines have figured out a way around this: get one of the world's most prominent photographers to do the shoot, and hey, the stars let it all hang out! New York got Lindsay Lohan to strip for Bert Stern, the photographer who once shot Marilyn Monroe in the same poses. And Vanity Fair used Annie Leibovitz's cachet to goad the young Miley Cyrus into a creepy come-hither pose. And now, sadly, supermodel and man-curse Gisele Bundchen has fallen victim to the same trend. Oh no!

Times columnist Joe Nocera is a busy man, and he doesn't have time for flackery and foolishness. But he recently got one press release "so brazen, so craven, so mind-bogglingly inane" that he had to put it on his blog for the world to revile. And coincidentally it's from a flack who also blogs at Huffington Post! Do you need to make sure all the other moms in the park are insanely jealous of you and your stylish little drooling brood? Let Amanda Christine Miller tell you how to turn your children into mere fashion accessories!

Tim Gunn is an expert on politics. Or rather, Tim Gunn-fashion maven, Project Runway mensch, stand-up guy-is an expert on what lady politicians or regular politicians' wives should be wearing. You may recall that Tim once called Hillary Clinton (she's a woman who tried to run for president once) "mannish" when prompted by Conan O'Brien. And now, when asked by no less than Time magazine, he's said that Cindy McCain (wife of an old man) looks like "someone twisted her ponytail into a knot and tried to give her a face lift." Michelle Obama (wife of a black person) on the other hand, looks fabulous. Why is it that Tim Gunn must always be consulted on these matters of state? Maybe there's some sort of cabinet position he could fill. Secretary of Oh Honey, No. Video is after the jump. His astute political analysis is at about 4:25.

Don't think for a second that Fox News has a monopoly on vicious, personal attacks against its media competitors. Daniel Saynt (pictured, left) of the blog Fashion Indie is in his own, particularly bitchy catfight with Sarah Conley and Julie Frederickson (pictured, right) of Coutorture. The battle started with a racial insult, then progressed to trash talking and now involves unflattering photos. And one gets the feeling that, when all is said and done, it's going to make the despicably nasty Fox-Times brawl look like a tea party. The whole thing started when Saynt wrote the following noxious critique of Vogue's Andre Leon Talley:

The New York Times writes today about the big impact that New York teen soap Gossip Girl has had on the fashion industry. Sure no one really watches the damn thing, but somehow legions of girls, having gawped at the show's fashions, have run shrieking to the internet to purchase fancy handbags online or trundle, ripped-out pages from magazines clutched in hand, up to their favorite boutique to wrap a super chic kilt around their processed-food-fed hips. It's truly a sensation! But just as Chuck would say to some lovelorn young lady: baby, you're not the first. Yes indeed movies and television have long dictated new fashion trends, whether on the design or the commerce end, for years and years now. After the jump take a look at a few other bits and pieces of the sartorial world that were influenced by those flickering images.

Can everyone, just for one quick moment, tear their minds away from picturing Chuck and Nate doing it, and remember the actual point of Gossip Girl? Yes, thank you, the clothes. The New York Times goes out into the field and gathers hard evidence of what was pretty obvious: Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf are, as far as fashion retailers are concerned, Carrie Bradshaw to the power of 100. Bloomingdales fashion director Stephanie Solomon says that the show "has had a profound influence on retail," while Teen Vogue editor Amy Astley admits that the characters' carefully styled wardrobes prompted "a pretty huge resurgence of ritzy, preppy and collegiate looks" on the runway. Even socialite designer Tory Burch has "girls coming in with magazine tear sheets of Blake Lively or Leighton Meester, from location shootings or from everyday life."

The feel-good issue of Italian Vogue featuring all black models in honor of Obama is about to hit the newsstands, washing away the last remnants of racial strife in the world. But some people are asking: why do they have to do the all-black issue during the slowest time of the year for magazines? Why not put it out in the busy season and really make a statement? We hate to even suggest it, but could it have something to do with... money?

The public face of PETA, Dan Mathews, has been flying around the world as usual, but instead of focusing solely on orchestrating wacky animal rights stunts, he's promoting his book, Committed: a Rabble-Rouser's Memoir, in which he describes PETA's public enemy no. 1, Anna Wintour, as looking "like she has constant, painful gas." Attacks on the Vogue editor have created some of the biggest headlines for PETA, but she remains intransigent in the face of gay ex-model Mathew's inventive campaigns: