♦ It's just such a relief to know that as the economic situation reaches new levels of bleakness, fashion journalists won't lose sight of what's important: Bows are back! Julia Restoin Roitfeld is the trend's pioneer, on the off chance that you needed persuading. [Grazia]
♦ Not quite as earth-shattering, but still important news: Maggie Gyllenhaal has jumped on the short haircut bandwagon. [Elle UK]
♦ Is the Ice Queen melting? In this heartwarming urban fairy tale, a young fan happens to see Anna Wintour in a store, and he tells her "OMG, I could just cry," but she says, "No, please don't cry," and then has Bee take a picture of the two of them. [Fashionista]

Serena Williams is 27 today. Others celebrating: Music exec Andre Harrell is 48, Christina Milian is 27, former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman is 62, Olivia Newton-John is 60, and Linda Hamilton turns 52. Two figures on the New York web scene will be blowing out candles this evening: Gothamist co-founder Jen Chung is 32. And Nerve.com founder Rufus Griscom is 41. Weekend birthdays after the jump!

♦ Rihanna appeared in the front row at the Gucci show in Milan yesterday and said she plans to launch a clothing line of her own. [WWD]
♦ Robin Givhan reports on a Tod's dinner in Milan with Gwyneth Paltrow (the face of the brand), Derek Lam, and Thakoon Panichgul, who, reports Givhan, was "still giddy" from seeing Michelle Obama in his dress at the convention, especially since she had bought it herself and hadn't been "styled into it." [WaPo]
♦ The Comme des Garçons line for H&M, which is about to hit stores, kind of negates the point of a mass market-designer collaboration: one of the dresses is $350. [Fashionista]
♦ Jonathan Adler's retail empire will expand to Columbus Avenue by the end of the year. [WWD]

[Actress Gwyneth Paltrow in Milan today; image via Splash] MattGaymon's new line beats the original, An Idea of Holland Made Manifest Out for a Stroll.

♦ On the heels of her PBS culinary show and appearance on Oprah last week, Gwyneth Paltrow is launching a new "lifestyle website" called Goop. "Read something beautiful. Treat yourself to something. Go to a city you've never been to," reads the site's mission statement. Of course, it's a lot easier to spend your days reading novels, shopping at fancy stores, and traveling to exotic places when you're as rich and famous as Gwyneth Paltrow. [The Daily]

[Actress Gwyneth Paltrow leaving a party for her PBS culinary tour of Spain show in New York last night; image via INF] Aaron Altman's new line beats the original, Be-Trash-Bagged Actress Walks In Place On World's Tiniest Red Carpet.

Kirsten Dunst offering a smile to photographers while walking in the Village ... Tom Cruise waving at photographers and later carrying Suri as he headed to the West Side heliport ... Claire Danes carrying grocery bags ... Alex Rodriguez walking through Midtown ... Rachael Ray's husband kissing her on a red carpet ... Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon walking into the theater to see In The Heights ... Mario Cantone pretending to drink out of a pink shoe at the SATC DVD release party ... An unhappy-looking Bono getting out of a car ... Drew Barrymore making her way through a crowd with her hand on Chace Crawford's arm ...Kate Winslet acting goofy with friends ... and Gwyneth Paltrow leaving a party for her new PBS show with Mario Batali.

[Actress Gwyneth Paltrow in London last night; image via Bauer-Griffin]

In a world where everything old is new again, the latest cultural relic to get its return to the spotlight is that staple of 80's cheese: the exercise instructional video. First resurrected by noted Americana anthropologist Heidi Montag, the fitness tape is set to receive its most high-profile update yet, says Marie Claire. Filling Jane Fonda's leotard this time will be none other than Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, who will share the secrets of how to attain a body worth baring in the pages of GQ and gams that could transfix even the most jaded talk show host:

• It's no fun living near Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Neighbors in the West Village say the two are "spoiled brats" since they have bodyguards posted outside their apartment on West 13th Street who make neighbors get off the stoop whenever the twins are arriving home, and the twins keep SUVs idling in front of the building for hours at a time. [P6]

· Noted shlockteur Stephen Sommers will write and direct Warner Bros.'s splashy Tarzan remake, set to push the flimsy-loincloth envelope further than any version to come before. [Variety] · Ravenous Spanish pantry-pirate Gwyneth Paltrow has hopped aboard a space skiff and escaped the CAA Death Star, having signed on with UTA on Tuesday afternoon. The direct implications this has upon your day-to-day lives should be negligible. [Variety] · Ted Danson has been cast in HBO comedy pilot Bored to Death, playing the "pompous but articulate magazine editor" mentor to Jason Schwartzman's "struggling Brooklyn writer with a drinking problem." [THR] · The Wonder Years writer-producer Bob Brush has been given a very strings-attached pilot order of Lost in the '80s, pitched as what happens when "Fast Times at Ridgemont High meets The Ice Storm," then sleeps with The Ice Storm's best friend Square Pegs, accidentally getting her pregnant and producing a son named Ordinary People. [THR] · Surprise! SAG and the AMPTP are fighting. The latest: SAG sent a 12-page letter to members outlining their problems with the producers' final offer, which they characterize as "one-sided and filled with misrepresentations." [THR]

Oh, Gwyneth, you swanned back into the spotlight by hiring a stylist to put you in a string of mini-dress and S&M heel combos, but then the fun and games ended and your unparalleled talent for making people dislike you reared its ugly head. Last weekend you offended rich Hamptonites by refusing to breathe the same air as them at a benefit. Then on Saturday night you dissed Madonna by not showing up to her 50th birthday party. Today the media has branded you an enemy of defenseless animals.

• Guests at a Bridgehampton benefit thrown by Gwyneth Paltrow were upset they couldn't mingle with their A-list host on Saturday night, since she was sequestered inside the house and off-limits to partygoers. But the real reason she wasn't mingling with the crowd may have been because she ditched the party early to attend Mariah Carey's wedding bash at LA Reid's house. [R&M, Page Six, Fox411]

• Showbiz spawn Elettra Wiedemann Rossellini (left) and Dakota Johnson, along with nightlifer Leigh Lezark, are the new faces of Italian leather company Hogan. [Teen Vogue]

1) On Saturday night, Gwyneth Paltrow co-hosted "The Mane Event" to benefit Amaryllis Farm Equine Rescue with photographer Steven Klein at his West Kill Farm in Bridgehampton. Arden Wohl, Kiera Chaplin, Kelly Klein, Patrick McMullan, Sale Johnson, and Rory Tahari all made appearances, but hotly anticipated guest Madonna was a no show. [NYO/PMc]

Gwyneth Paltrow has worked really hard at ditching her snottier-than-thou attitude this year. Not only did she go to great lengths to sex up her image during the seemingly endless Iron Man press tour by donning a series of towering heels and flashing ample amounts of thigh, her admission that she's raising a pair of cross-dressing toddlers might even earn a nod of approval from the Lou Reed and David Johansen's of the world. But all of the inroads she's built look like they could come crashing down, thanks to her appearance in a hoity-toity political ad airing overseas now.After crushing poor Scarlett Johansson's double-D sized heart after publicly imploding their burgeoning email relationship, Barack Obama has been battling charges of elitism from the right-wing media and fending off attacks from John McCain that he's just another Valtrex popping celebutard. While recruiting Gwyneth Paltrow to appear in a special "Vote Abroad" campaign might help with the latter attack, it certainly doesn't help him with the former. And as for Gwyneth? We're not sure what it is about you that we're supposed to identify with as being All-American these days. You live abroad (meaning, you're not just there temporarily for a job). You're married to a mopey musician (who was born, raised and currently abides in England). You're raising your kids to be British. You won an Oscar ... for playing a Brit. Forgive us if we're finding it difficult to find the ties between you and baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Except, of course, for the fact that you named your kid Apple.

Remember that guy John Kerry who ran for president? He was always trying to cast himself as such an average guy, getting embarrassed when he was photographed windsurfing and generally behaving like he wasn't a Massachusetts millionaire. This made lots of Democrats who are also smart hate John Kerry. Obama, though, is not afraid to embrace his own celebrity. Which makes the urban NPR demographic love him, because they can get their jolt of politics and celebrity all at once, leaving them more time for unproductive leisure. And Democrats haven't forgetten that lots of the upwardly mobile US liberals live in civilized Europe; so Democrats Abroad has just released this "viral video" urging them all to vote. Gwyneth Paltrow is in it! Forget to send in your absentee ballot for Obama and lose your chance to be invited to a Gwyneth Paltrow dinner party, is the unspoken message. Watch it below:

She may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but Gwyneth Paltrow has taken one very effective PR trick to heart: A good way to stay in the public eye when you're not actually working that much—while also appearing to care about anything other than yourself—is to lend a little time to "causes." There was her recent UNICEF PSA for preventing childhood HIV, her Key For a Cure ambassadorship, and now she's the famous face in this video exhorting American ex-pats to vote for Obama: "I'll be voting from London," she shares, "but you can vote from anywhere. If you live abroad, you've got to do it." Clearly no American in a far-off land will fail to submit to such persuasion, especially as Gwynnie uses the most familiar of her three emote-modes: earnest!

To say that Meg Ryan's career is in a free-fall would be to imply that her career hasn't already hit rock bottom. While it's true that she's poised for a potential comeback in this fall's remake of The Women, anyone with half a brain realizes that her star died the day the news broke that she was schtupping Russell Crowe on the set of Proof Of Life back in 2000. Making matters even worse for America's Former Sweetheart™, in Meg's newest (straight-to-DVD) movie called My Mom's Hot Boyfriend, she becomes the latest in a long string of actresses to strap herself into a fat suit only to magically "slim down" to win the heart of a handsome man — a trick which stopped being funny the second time that the Friends gang went to that well. While we're not about to get up on a pedestal and start going off about the offensiveness of fat suits, this news did prompt us to go back and take a look at some of the stars who have donned prosthetics to plump up on-screen in the past (rarely, if ever, to humorous effect). Play along with our latest round of Defamer Bingo after the jump.

Keri Russell and her son River going grocery shopping in Brooklyn ... Lindsay Lohan showing up for work on the set of Ugly Betty ... Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly at a parking garage ... Meg Ryan and her son taking a stroll through SoHo ... Ice-T shooting a scene for Law & Order ... Gwyneth Paltrow taking a walk in the Hamptons while Madonna pushes Apple in a stroller ... Ashanti posing for photos in Rockefeller Plaza.