You kids are in for a treat today. Why? From this week's New York mag, We bring to you a Video Look Book, featuring art student Chrissy Bradley. And the video is essential here, because Chrissy's inflection really completes the Paris-Euro-Cali ensemble that would otherwise look like something straight off the racks at H&M to undiscerning eyes. Chrissy lives in a "gorgeous big loft", believes that "fashion is the artifact of cultuuuuuure" and... oh, we can't do her justice.

A Swede by the name of Jonathan Lundqvist returned from Iran last month with a bundle of National Geographics, Economists, and Wallpapers purchased from a newsstand near Tehran University. Though these and other Western mags are permitted, they're heavily censored — moreover, they're manually censored, by government readers who go through each copy and cover forbidden ladyparts with white stickers or black ink. Interestingly, news stories that show women with bare arms, knees, or cleavage generally just get a blocky white sticker, while fashion ads (like Uma Thurman above) get ink jobs that keep the clothes unobscured. Some ink gets more artfully applied than others; Uma almost looks like she's wearing a black top of some kind. After the jump, less fortunate girls just get slapped with chastity-protecting boob blobs. Lundqvist noted that the newsstand stocked several mag issues that were quite old (these photos are from Wallpaper, September 2005); one wonders what the turnaround is on hand-censoring. (The newsstand owner was also shocked that Lundqvist declined to purchase some un-censored fashion mags from "under the counter.")

We should have known Russia was behind the times when we unearthed a largely cyrillic Olsen Twins Jailbait Countdown page whose clock still showed 12 years to go. But, today, there's further proof that the rubble from the fall of Communism choked off Mother Russia's pop-culture outlets: Photos posted by JJB reveal that the country's Bouton Fashion House recently debuted a collection inspired by and dedicated to Michael Jackson — but not the baby-dangling, scarf-swaddled bandit of our nation's innocence we know today; no, their ideal of the King of Pop is firmly rooted back (waaay back) when he was merely "Bad" but not yet baptising children with the velvet caress of some Jesus Juice.

Color us surprised to discover that we're in the midst of L.A.'s Fashion Week, the paste-eating cousin of possibly incestuous parentage to the significantly more glamorous events staged in places like New York, Paris, and Cleveland. But in the interest of helping our friends in the fashion world protect their precious runwayside seats from brash interlopers with vague genetic ties to some of our city's most powerful residents, we pass along today's Page Six story about the efforts of an alleged distant cousin of Steven Spielberg to secure the VIP treatment that is her possibly nonexistent birthright:

It's a bright and sunny day, but shit's colder than Satan's third nipple out there! (We adjust very slowly to climate change.) While we fix you some hot chocolate, warm your soul with Blue States Lose, where we play martyrs and look at pictures of fucked-up hipsters on The Cobrasnake, Last Night’s Party, Misshapes, and Ambrel so you don't have to. After the jump, Alex Blagg dances on the ceiling.

Just when fashion twigs thought they'd successfully fended off anti-skinny assaults, London mayor Ken Livingstone has declared he'll terminate the city's financial support of London Fashion Week if the fest doesn't ban anorexically thin girls (as Madrid did for their fashion week). It's a significant threat, as London has forked over 620,000 to Fashion Week during the last three years. No official response yet from LFW organizer British Fashion Council, but one commenter on the Daily Mail story adopts a variation on the Lagerfeld line: "These models only stand out because most people are overweight and eat far more than the body needs. There is a lot of jealousy involved." If only everyone else wasn't so goddamn fat, these tiny girls wouldn't look so weird, you see?

Forget allergen-free cats — how freaking cute are these little guys? This week's edition of New York mag's Look Book appeals directly to the ovaries with Jeziah Robertson and Dakotarome Paul, 6 and 7-year-old cousins, respectively. Dakota thinks he's often mistaken for a 40-year-old because of his sharp suit, and Dakotarome loves dressing up and feeling like a model. Their favorite football team is the "Deadskins" and Jeziah wants to look just like his dad when he grows up and we're going to die old and alone and unloved and barren.

Despite other instances of lamery (new word!), Radar reports (with major research on PatrickMcMullan.com) on quite the swagfest: last week, eighty of the city's most important arbiters of snobbery were invited on an all-expense-paid trip to Istanbul to celebrate a Turkish department store's collaboration with fashion darling Zac Posen. Guests included Rufus Albemarle, Paz de la Huerta, Isabella Blow, Padma Lakshmi, Amy Sacco — you know, the usual Saturday night board-game crew. The gang enjoyed the requisite yacht time, black-tie dining, performance from Dita von Teese, and perhaps some skinny-dipping and swinging.

You might know this week's Look Book victim in New York mag as The Mad Mustache of Midtown, but the fellow at right is actually attorney Louis R. Aidala, a guy who says he's so talented that he's acted as special prosecutor and a defense attorney at the same time — and he finds knives behind toilets. Recognize, people. Aidala won't say what influences his style, but he loves his a. testoni shoes and does express some concern over who'll properly wax his mustache for his funeral. Pleasant!

Oh my gawwwd, did you hear what happened to ex-Microsoft blogger and up-and-coming podcaster Robert Scoble this week? Did someone in Menlo Park forget that rock stars have no dress code?

"You know what you should be thinking? Think Lower East Side. No, hear me out: A year ago, it used to be totally dirty and unsafe, but now there's a Starbucks and some shops that were listed in Lucky and even an all-organic boutique, so it's okay to go down there. Yeah, yeah, there are still some Asians running around, but they'll work at the new hotel or something. But that's not what I'm saying, man — I'm saying that the place is perfect, you know? There's life in that area, real characters running around, real grit and dirt but not, like, so dirty that we can't take the models down there. No, seriously, I've found this totally retro tenement where we can shoot. It's a fifth-floor walkup, but once you get up there, it's worth it 'cause it's, like, so fucking real. We'll even grab a local and throw 'em in there. Shit, this campaign is going to MAKE US. Totally street, totally DKNY."

So Yahoo Hack Day '06 was held this weekend and I'm looking at the TechCrunch post about the winning team and the Asian girl looked super familar! Turns out she's a Project Runway season 2 reject.

The BBC needed an illustration for its story about Ubuntu, the sub-Saharan African philosophy meaning "I am because we are," which Bill Clinton this week exhorted the British Labor Party to embrace.

Meet Shelley Hennig, Miss Teen USA 2004 and this week's featured face in New York magazine's Look Book. Shelley's your typical mactress, bouncing around New York and doing flying leaps and jet s whenever a photographer shows up. Her stylist tells her that West 8th Street is NYC's unofficial shoe district, so she shops around there — but not right now. First, Shelley's got to take her dad to the "beautiful" South Street Seaport. Rah rah!

New York is so liberal and cool!

If you're looking for something or someone to do today, Jewy gay pornographer Michael Lucas' latest glossy hardcore production, La Dolce Vita will be shooting in the Jewy gay temple of fashion porn:

For this week's edition of New York magazine's Look Book, Amy Larocca found the silliest looking dudes she could just so that Adam Moss couldn't be accused of ignoring the "urban" demographic. The victims are Jonathan "Fli Guy" Saunders, Tyquan "Young Money" Jonies, Erick "Socks" Jonies and Derron "Ronney Fresh" Bond. They consider their look to be "geek style," and the whole goal is to dress like Will Smith circa Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And there's really not a lot more we can say. The pic is pretty self-explanatory.

• If you want to win in the end, you've got to indoctrinate them when they're young. [LittleDemocrats]
• Whitney Houston's sober, and you've got Courtney Love to thank for it. Now just imagine how that all came about. [Idolator]
• Why in the name of God is Men's Vogue hosting a slideshow of Francesco Vezzoli's Caligula? This really doesn't help their case. [Men's Vogue]
• The New Yorker pacifies toddlers and puts to sleep people of all ages. [Flickr]
• Giorgio Armani designs tomorrow's issue of the Independent, affectionately called the Red Issue. Just like his skin. [Independent]
• Only hipsters would upload a video with puppets singing about hipsters. [Animal]
• Murray's Hill: an imagined sitcom with music by the Fray, sponsored by Sparks. [Leveraged Sellout]
• Kanye West is many things to many people. Many Gay things. [One D at a Time]
• Jane editor Brandon Holley abandons punk roots, gets engaged. Mazel tov, ya sellout! [FishbowlNY]
• Sad news for fans of excellent British automotive television: Top Gear's Richard Hammond has been in a car accident. At 280 MPH. [Jalopnik]

Fake writer James Frey has been slowly reintroducing himself into society, emerging from the Tribeca loft he shares with his wife and daughter to attend a select few chic events hosted by artists or VH1. As part of the progression of returning to some semblance of public life, Frey allowed his wife, Maya, to drag him to the front row of Cynthia Rowley's show last Thursday, where the two were subjected to the rote "who are you wearing?" drill, courtesy of the Observer. Frey himself was decked in Lacoste, Hanes, J. Crew, and Adidas. Modestly attired, more or less (save for his street-cred friendly Tiffany earrings). The cheerful Mrs. Frey, however, was more upscale, sporting Prada and Hermes. Obviously, a marriage fractured by the tension of widespread disgrace and embarrassment isn't anything a generous shopping allowance can't fix.

Last Thursday, in her personal piece de resistance, Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn could not overstate the sheer awesomeness of haute whores and popular DJs the MisShapes, stating that their Bolivian-slim frames and bowl-shaped haircuts had influenced Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane's July runway show. Slimane, however, took issue with the attribution: