Elle magazine has more internal drama at its website than one fashion website deserves! Elle.com is perhaps Hachette's most visible site, so its success is an important totem for the company to prove it knows how to do digital things right. But after some ballyhooed comings and goings at the site that have been noted here over the past month, media types are wondering whether Hachette is planning a total restart of its online properties. Well, even more new turnover at Elle.com could mean just that!

Is there a behind-the-scenes magazine war going on between Vogue and Interview for the services of the best photographers in the business? Sources say there just might be! It's a rather important issue, considering the publications. The spat, we hear, goes to the heart of icy Vogue editor Anna Wintour's sense of entitlement in the fashion magazine world. Do not make her jealous:

When the winter snows retreat and the spring gives way to the warming rays of the summer sun, urban gentlemen customarily carry an extra handkerchief to dab the sweat that accumulates within their long trousers. But in this modern age, it seems, some fashion-forward men are turning to an odd form of above-the-knee abbreviated breeches, casually referred to as "shorts." The New York Observer kindly explores the world of the daring striders who are unafraid to expose their lower legs on the streets of our metropolis:

Sean Avery, a man of contradictions. He has an eye for couture, but is definitely straight. He plays left wing for the New York Rangers (that's ice hockey, I'm told) but he was also a fabulous fashion intern at Vogue. The sartorial skater is in Paris right now gawping at the Chanel, Gautier, and Dior shows (with oh, you know, Anna), while also making time to mack on cute blonde lady bloggers. Specifically fashion writer Susan Kirschbaum, who ran into Avery in Paris, asked if he was sure he wasn't gay and was met with an endearingly bonk! straight boy response:

$8 million. Does that seem like a lot of money for a company to pay to have mediocre models use their hair products on a mediocre cable show for a few seasons? It kind of does. But that's how much The Weinstein Company, run by entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein, is trying to squeeze out of L'Oreal for three seasons of sponsorship of Project Runway. Of course, Weinstein has a long history of pimping out the fashion reality show to every company on earth willing to pay a dime to be on it, using it as a profit machine to support his company's less sure-thing ventures. And he's still milking it for every cent. How do we know? Because he left all the evidence in a public trash can:

• What on earth is going on? Anna Wintour wore the same Carolina Herrera dress three times in two weeks: At Milan fashion week, at Wimbledon, and at the Karl Lagerfeld show in Paris. The floral shift had been altered to fit her famous stick insect figure. As if that's any excuse. [Telegraph]
  

Paris says that boys are supposed to look like girls next year. The Paris men's shows which just ended were unified by a theme of male's fashion with some decidedly feminine flair. Another big trend was global warming, with linen, silk, and light cotton getting a lot of play. So apparently we all need to be wearing more fuschia clam diggers. Perhaps Emmanuel Ungaro designer Franck Boclet put it best when he said "I wanted a gay fresh style." [Yahoo! News]

The now-famous but still anonymous American Apparel ad spoofer has always done his or her part to portray the hipster robot clothing company's ads as they are in CEO Dov Charney's mind: tasteful porn. The spoofer knows that the mandate to actually put clothes in his ads is just a necessary evil to Dov; he'd rather just see naked, self-stimulating, shaven women writhing around in space—perhaps accompanied by a cute animal. But now the spoofer is urging a return to the unshaven days of yore; a move that fits in with AA's faux-natural branding quite nicely. Clever viral marketing (doubtful)? Or just an unspoken call for variety in AA's secret full-on nude ads, to be unveiled as soon as society is ready for them? After the jump, full photos of the spoofer's latest porny—yet natural—line drawings:

Before he's even gone down in history for doing anything, Barack Obama is enjoying the company of the likes of Che Guevara and Bob Marley as a "statement" t-shirt. "Young people are acting like it's some kind of revolution," says a Union Square vendor who sells T-shirts hand-painted with images of Obama. "He's in demand right now. He's selling better than everybody." Naturally, Urban Outfitters is selling a bunch of Obama-slogan shirts—but we wonder how many of the hiptards snapping up "Obama for Yo Mama" and "Barack 'n' Roll" shirts have any idea that their money is going straight to Urban Outfitters' billionaire owner Richard Hayne, staunch conservative and frequent contributor to Republican causes and candidates like Rick Santorum. Ah, the irony: For every Barack t-shirt an idealistic kid buys at UO, a few pennies drop in the campaign coffers of Republicans like John McCain.

On the 20th anniversary of Anna Wintour's ascension to editor-in-chief of Vogue, the Washington Post's fashion editor Robin Givhan extravagantly eulogizes the "master of the universe who wears her power as comfortably and impeccably as Chanel couture" and reveals that, in case you were going to question her authority, she knows of what she speaks:

On Saturday afternoon a young woman committed suicide by jumping out of the window of her lower Manhattan apartment, and because she was a beautiful fashion model, it's obviously much, much sadder than if she were a regular person, and must be analyzed and raked over extensively by journalists and bloggers in every corner of the globe. 20-year-old Ruslana Korshunova, from Kazakhstan, was a "gorgeous supermodel" who had appeared in campaigns for Marc Jacobs, DKNY and Vera Wang, says the Post, and while friends say she wasn't depressed, her messages on social networking sites (obviously they'd be involved somehow) tell another story, according to the Daily News. We expect details involving anorexia and evil model bookers to emerge any second, but real closure probably won't come until Detectives Lupo and Bernard suspect foul play and get to the bottom of it.

VBS.TV (Vice magazine's online video channel) has an 8-part series called "Illegal LA" about the illegal immigration issue. The setup is to tell the story through the eyes of several key figures on different sides of the issue—including pervy American Apparel CEO Dov Charney! It raises an interesting point: though Charney is the neurotic head of our nation's most annoying fashion line who enjoys playing with himself in front of reporters, he is also one of the only entrepreneurs in his field with a truly progressive labor policy. Should he be forgiven for the first because of the second? No, but at least he has a mark in his favor on the balance sheet. After the jump, two clips featuring Charney's take on this unjust country of ours; and, as a counterpoint, a new spoof American Apparel ad that graphically reminds you of the evils of spandex.

A Brooklyn rap crew has started a movement against tight clothes in hip hop. Cool! Not so cool: "'It basically boils down to: You are in a homosexual attire, and you are claiming to be something else,' says 28-year-old TSF member Blanco the Don. 'That's what I have a problem with—not the homosexualism.'" [VV. And what about the TIGHT SAG?]

An old joke about San Francisco's economy is that half the people are in the business of selling t-shirts to the other half. Any Valley denizen quickly accumulates a wide assortment of corporate logos in their laundry. But be careful which company's brand you're sporting around the office.

The question in the headline is from InStyle's interview with actress Anne Hathaway in its upcoming issue. And we have a scan of it! To recap: Hathaway broke up with Follieri last week, and yesterday he was arrested on wire fraud and money laundering charges. So it must be so weird for her to have this interview coming out in which she gushes about cooking pasta for Follieri and throwing awesome dinner parties with him (not any more though, cause of the whole house arrest thing). Such unfortunate timing. Click through for a large version of the awk-ward InStyle page:

Fashion magazines have a female target audience. But the look of many fashion magazines is controlled, to a large extent, by gay men. Is that a problem for the magazines? It could be. The interests of the gays and fashion-conscious women overlap, but not perfectly (see the Perez Hilton empire, example A). But is it really possible for a women's fashion magazine to become too gay? A brief perusal of Elle tells us: it just might be!

Will rippling athlete-turned-fully-fledged (albeit still ostensibly hetero) fashion fag Sean Avery ever play hockey again? He's starting a fashion company, done an internship at Vogue, spending this week guest-editing Men's Vogue, all the while admirably unashamed of the joy he derives from, say, pulling together an outfit with the perfect leopard print Alexander McQueen vest. What will next week bring? Glad you asked: He's heading over to Paris for the couture shows, of which he's particularly looking forward to Chanel, obviously. Now, to those who are amused by Avery's unorthodox interests, he has something to say:

Hockey star Sean Avery is "guest editing" MensVogue.com this week, which means that, technically, he is the one who decided to print a picture of himself shirtless (above) for the slideshow accompanying his essay about life as a Vogue intern. The essay itself details Avery's love of fashion — especially women's fashion, which he finds "especially interesting — there are so many options, and they can tell more of a story." Go ahead and make the gay jokes, Avery has already heard them. And they don't stop him from bragging that he added a "leopard-print Alexander McQueen vest" to a photo shoot he worked, and that it "pulled the outfit together."

It's the feel-good fashion story of the summer! Man-hopping uberdesigner Marc Jacobs gave a prototype of his "Sunburst BB Shoulderbag" to the bag's inspiration, Filipino fashion blogger Bryanboy! Jacobs, you'll recall, emailed the much-read, often-imitated blogger in February to say he would name the Ostrich version of a forthcoming bag after him. It wasn't clear whether Bryanboy would ever get to hold "his" bag. Well, it turns out Jacobs is naming the entire style after him, in all leathers and colors, and sent Bryanboy his bag wrapped up all fancy, with a very special personal note. Bryanboy said he was "crying my face off" for at least 12 hours, which means it was probably DAYS. "This is the best thing that has ever happened to me," Bryanboy wrote on his blog, before taking it to a club in his pajamas, as seen in the photo above. Awwww... See, Marc Jacobs' wandering eye doesn't always break hearts. (Photo via Bryanboy)

In his "On The Street" slide show for the Times Style section today, longtime fashion photographer Bill Cunningham (pic) can't get over the kids today and their saggy jeans. In fact, Cunningham keeps waiting for a pair of low-slung trousers to fall off someomne's torso, yet they refuse, and the whole thing is a tragedy. Said Cunningham: "I have waited and thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to get one right now, his pants are going to fall off. And it hasn't happened. It's just terrible. I've waited and waited." But he'll probably get his coveted "saggy jeans fall off some kid" shot soon enough since, according to Cunningham's theory, male waistlines seem to fall in sync with the ailing stock market. Video excerpt after the jump.