What is it about super high fashion magazines that convinces straight male actors to remove their shirts? The latest victim is Ryan Phillippe [Photo via Just Jared], who poses pensively in the new W Magazine, staring out a window with his nipples exposed, hands held abreast as if squeezing two imaginary Big Gulp cups. The same type of thing happened to Brad Pitt in Italian Vogue when he was promoting "Troy" several years ago (examples after the jump). These aren't the kinds of shots you see in GQ, or Esquire, or Shotgun News. Is it a desire to appeal to fashionable women? Or fashionable men? Or some secret spell that only rarefied fashion photographers can cast? What about the ridicule one should inevitable suffer from one's male friends over this? As a fellow straight man, I have no answers here.

Fashion Designer Marc Jacobs' company is under investigation for giving $30,000 in goodies to use a historic New York armory at 25th and Lexington and for possibly underpaying taxpayers in the process. What, exactly, did Jacobs give 30-year state employee James Jackson in exchange for use of the armory? Exercise equipment, because apparently Jacobs can never stop trying to make everyone and everything look perfect and fabulous, and how is that a crime?! Oh also, he gave "illegal tips," but that was probably just for some new outfits because the old bureaucrat couldn't fit into samples. After the jump, director Sofia Coppola and novelist Francine Prose unwittingly provide advance warning of Jacobs' shenanigans.

A defender of the detachment of the British royal family once said: “We must not let daylight in upon the magic.” Advice which applies to Marc Jacobs, the designer, subject of a documentary airing this month on the Sundance Channel. Jacobs' affection for gay porn stars doesn't diminish his mystique: fashion industry figures are expected to be outrageously homosexual. But take a look at the designer (the most influential of his generation, the narrator declares) in "pigeon disguise" so ambitious and cumbersome that he has to ride in a truck. That epitomizes his whole state of mind, we're told; it also epitomizes the absurdity of the fashion industry. Click for Marc Jacobs thoughtful, chain-smoking; the fashion designer on inspiration; on the horns of a dilemma ("This is so horrible that it is good. Or is it so horrible that it's horrible?"); and, yes, as a pigeon.

Gay porn star and escort Erik Rhodes took to his NSFW personal website again to assert, directly this time, that he and designer Marc Jacobs "are just friends" and not sneaking away for hot sex romps (NSFW) behind the back of Jacobs' onetime boyfriend, male escort Jason Preston. But Rhodes stopped short of denying he had hooked up with Jacobs in the past. The best line in his new posting: "Ps. Stop asking me for discounts at the Marc Jacobs store. Jesus." After the jump, slightly NSFW pictures of Rhodes and why he might have attended Jacobs' Fashion Week show, along with Preston.

The New York Times has a piece in the endlessly entertaining/aspirational Styles section about what magazine editors are wearing at Fashion Week. Quoted is Scott Schuman, the guy who runs the street fashion blog Sartorialist. He says: "People say to me: ‘Why do you shoot editors? They're not real people,' " Mr. Schuman said. "But they are. They're professionals with deadlines and work to do." The article also comes with a slideshow that includes price tags. The sum of these price tags indicate that whatever work these editors do, they are extremely well compensated. The man below, for example, who looks quite editorial, is wearing and/or surrounded by $5,685 worth of clothing and luggage. That's approximately 11% of an editor's average salary. Breakdown after the jump.

When fleshier, more ordinary-looking models flood into New York for Fashion Week on Friday, you can thank bloggers for all the unconventional faces. A notoriously ugly group themselves, bloggers have begun selling photos of other homely types to brands like Converse, Lycra and Ben Sherman, and now the rest of the fashion industry supposedly wants to move beyond cookie-cutter notions of hot, according to Newsweek. We'll see — the eating-disorder-plagued industry has been loudly promising reform for more than a year now, and as the following sampler shows, some of these "real people" just look like models with glasses on. Click to meet the new faces of fashion.

It's hard to believe, but TV talk show host and scrappy-mutts'-rights activist Ellen DeGeneres is turning 50 on Saturday. (Also on that Day in Lesbian History: In 1913, Toklas and Stein discover the Scissor Sisters technique while on holiday in Marakesh!) To celebrate a life devoted to bringing unscripted laughter and the gift of aisle-choreography to the masses, the comedian has gone through the archives to share with Us Weekly some of the worst outfits from the past decades spent in the public eye. (Click here or the thumbnail for a closer view.) For you see, before discovering the custom-tailored Gucci tuxshedo, DeGeneres spent most of her time working the corner of Mullet Ave. and Fashion Nightmare Blvd., hitting style rock-bottom in a haze of high-waisted stonewash, bolo ties, and patterned linen vests.

It's January in Hollywood, and that means it's time for Mr. Blackwell to once again push aside the heavy marble lid of his flawlessly appointed crypt in the ritzier district of the Hollywood Forever Retirement Community, and deliver the 48th edition of his Annual Worst-Dressed Women List. In a rare display of magnanimity which could indicate he might actually be softening in his third geologic era on Earth, Blackwell has left Britney Spears off completely, showing a Dr. Philian empathy for the singer at a time "when her personal life is in such upheaval." This year's results after the jump:

Since time immemorial, we have received missives from a person called The Earl Grey, the greatest social documentarian of our time. This one is the whoppingest, most stellar one yet—an awards show unto itself of the year in fashion spreads. Warning: Along the way, space and time collapse and capital letters disappear!

Author, philosopher (and Paul Janka lookalike!) Bernard-Henri Levy was recently queried about his personal style by Amanda Christine Miller, who is like the Huffington Post's low-rent answer to Deborah Solomon. (Previously she has asked CNN hottie Christiane Amanpour about her safari jackets and Slash about his top hat.) This week she embarrassed America with the man the French call simply BHL.

Designer Marc Jacobs has it all. If by "all" you mean a tattoo that says "Perfect" (almost as good as "Authenticity"), a hernia from overexercising, and two remarkably similar deeply ambivalent articles, one in the Times Thursday Styles section by Eric Wilson and one in New York Look by Amy Larocca. Lucky guy! [NYT, Photo: Out]

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal for profiling an atypical celebrity of sorts this morning: John Wesley Jermyn, better known as "The Crazy Robertson" or "The Robertson Dancer" to locals. Jermyn, onetime draft choice for the Kansas City Royals and a fixture for years on the southern tip of the celebrity-drizzled slice of Robertson, has over the course of two decades made a name for himself by doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else: dancing on rollerblades in riotous sheer spandex outfits.

"Apparently the gays raided H&M for the limited edition Cavalli line," says a reader. "I mean reallly? Cavalli's pretty ugly. It's for meth users who like Versace." Apparently, the scenes this week were a total freakshow: Sheer pandemonium in the name of sheer animal print crap!

Does Web 2.0 commodify the work of artists? Yes, if it makes them create silly projects like this "Are You Social?" shirt. "The owner of the T-shirt is expected to mark the services he uses with a pen and to wear it in public. What happens when users start wearing their network identities openly in public?" Then users start getting drinks thrown in their faces, that's what happens. Take off the shirt* and have a real conversation.

There's a new species of bear in the entangled gay forest that is New York fashion, claims the New York Observer: The highly not-dangerous, sort of comfy, sort of roomy, Design Bear! They're like regular big ol' gay bears, but they works in fashion or retail or like fancy fey stuff, and, as such, do not conform to the Ford/Jacobs/Lagerfeld school of grape diets and chest waxing. Design Bear is often seen avec beard but sans fashionable duds, and is often coated in a pelt of plaid workshirts!

We're of at least two minds about "The Hills" star Lauren Conrad's new fashion line. Poorly-made cynical cashing-in by a brand-person-entity? Or the realization of a delicate young girl's lifelong dream? Herewith, the con. The pro follows.

Basically all the black people in fashion got together this morning. Iman! Naomi! Andre! Robin Givhan! The report: "Agents don't search for black models because they don't think they can sell; designers don't book black models because they feel no need to; magazine editors don't pick black models because, once again, they don't think they'll sell magazines." [Fashion Bomb]

For months or maybe years, AM New York editor Justin Rocket Silverman has enjoyed a reputation as, basically, the only cute straight guy at blogmedia parties besides Times party-ho Nick Confessore. But a spread in the September issue of Men's Health has jeopardized that status, potentially forevs.

"We are having more of a presentation than a show, with models walking down the runway to inhabit tableaus vivant, or living painting," wrote socialolgay Kristian Laliberte to a company from which he's trying to get free stuff for his fashion week goodie bags. Heh. What other fabuleus things are in store for those lucky enough to be invited to Unruly Heir's Spring/Summer '08 Fashion Event at the Soho Grand?

Each season on Project Runway, "Fashion Director for Elle Magazine" Nina Garcia gets bitcher and bitchier as she gets more famous. That eternal tan! That perfectly highlighted hair! That little smirk every time they mention that she is "Fashion Director for Elle Magazine"! The way she plays favorites! It's all enough to remind us why we never worked for a fashion magazine. That, and we're not a size 2. Anyway, Nina has a new book coming out after Labor Day called The Little Black Book of Style, where she imparts her wisdom about the world of fashion unto others for the low, low price of $17.95, or just $3.95 more than a year's subscription to Elle. Money well spent, undoubtedly. In the Author's Note, we learn that Nina's style was formed not just by her glamorous Colombian parents, but also by the frumpy girls at her prep school outside of Boston.