A JCPenney billboard promoting an exclusive Michael Graves-designed tea kettle has been turning the heads of motorists driving along the 405 near Culver City.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the bewildering fall of J.C. Penney, a $17-jean store named after a small denomination of legal tender that tried to rebrand itself as a fancy boutique by refusing to put items "on sale."

In what appears to be a direct response to the failed boycott campaign of anti-gay group One Million Moms, JCPenney yesterday unveiled a new Father's Day ad featuring a same-sex couple playing with their children.

The bed bug infestation continues to take New York by storm. The latest victim? International advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi. Could middle American fashion temple JC Penney be at fault?

Anna Wintour's Make-People-Like-Me-Before-My-Contract-Is-Up Tour 2009 needed a charitable arm. She came up with Fashion's Night Out, a plan to save the industry, the economy, and her job all at once. But it's not a charity, it's a power play.

[Chelsea was besieged by Ronsons last night as Samantha and Mark DJed at the launch party for sister Charlotte's new JCPenney clothing line. Image via Getty]

• Polo Ralph Lauren has been hit with a lawsuit for stamping the word "lifeguard" on clothing without permission. Another company is claiming it trademarked the word years ago. [NYP]
• As expected, Escada filed for bankruptcy protection in a German court today. [Bloomberg]
• Is Bravo renewing The Fashion Show for a second season? That's unclear for the time being. [Cut]
• Tory Burch and Georgina Chapman are making cameos on the next season of Gossip Girl. [WWD]
• Now that visiting a tanning a salon is tantamount to sucking on asbestos or consuming toxic nuclear waste, is "pale the new tan"? [NYT]

• Cintra Wilson is not impressed with the NYC's very first JCPenney: "Why would this perennially square department store bother to reanimate itself in Manhattan—in the sleekest, scariest fashion city in America—during a hair-raising economic downturn, without taking the opportunity to vigorously rebrand itself?" Making matters worse, she says even the mannequins are obese: "It's like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of Roseanne." [NYT]
• Contrary to recent rumors, Kanye West is not interning at the Gap. [FWD]
• It looks like Escada is the latest fashion house to go bust. [Bloomberg]
• Anna Wintour will appear on Dave Letterman's show on August 24. (Set your DVR!) In other Anna-related news (and despite recent budget cuts at Condé Nast), the Vogue editrix will be making the trip to London Fashion Week.

For whatever reason, this morning's opening of the new JCPenney store at the Manhattan Mall in Herald Square brought together Michael Bloomberg and Kimora Lee Simmons. Stylist dutifully reports that Kimora wore a "royal blue and orange colorblock top that tied at the back with a slim black pencil skirt" for the occasion. Alas, no word (yet) on Mayor Bloomberg's wardrobe particulars, although the tie certainly looks familiar. [Stylist]

• Gisele Bundchen's baby bump was retouched out of London Fog's fall ad campaign. But if you're absolutely dying to see it, the new issue of People seems to deliver. [WWD, Cut, F'gie]
• WWI influenced fashion. So did WWII. And Vietnam. So why is it that we're not seeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reflected on the catwalk? [AP]
• What went down at the CFDA's "town hall" yesterday: Anna Wintour sort of proposed flouting anti-trust laws to boost the fashion industry, Diane von Furstenberg was sort of horrified by the idea, and then Anna informed the room that she has connections in the White House. [NYO]

• In the market for a $40,000 dress? Better jump on a plane to Paris. Haute Couture Week kicked off today. [AP, Vogue UK, Independent, FWD]
• The situation at Christian Lacroix, which filed for bankruptcy a few weeks back, is getting bleaker by the day: The company may be reduced from 124 employees to 12 if a buyer doesn't materialize soon. [WWD, Cut]
• The JCPenney at the Manhattan Mall opens in a mere 25 days. Don't forget to update your cousins in Omaha so they can mark their calendars. [Racked]
• Roberto Cavalli claims he never pays attention to costs ("I don't know anything about the financial crisis"), thinks Dubai is "a city for the future," and says all he really wants is to be loved. So, yes, he's human. [Times UK]
• Elle's Joe Zee is now tweeting, just so you know. [Twitter]

JCPenney's new terrible, stupid prison ad is probably the future of advertising, sadly. It's been released as a five-minute internet video and was created by Saatchi & Saatchi, the same firm that kinda-but-not-technically created a "yay teen sex" ad for the retailer earlier this year. This seems to be the same sort of play: controversy=attention. And it's working! All Saatchi had to do this time was film some loser husbands crawling around like dogs, in a dungeon, ruled by women. (Yes, it's after the jump.)

♦ A first look at Charlotte Ronson's line for JCPenney, I Heart Ronson, and her new $30 dresses. [Nylon]
♦ Details on the cuts at Men's Vogue: The mag will be published just two times next year and publisher Marc Berger is leaving. The fate of other staffers is unclear. [Mediaweek]
♦ Damien Hirst's latest collaboration with Levi's includes pairs of jeans for $230 and $83 t-shirts. [WWD]
♦ Plastic surgeons report interest in cosmetic procedures is dropping fast. [NYT]

Two of the ad guys at Saatchi who worked on that unauthorized JC Penney pro-teen sex ad are now leaving the agency for unspecified reasons. One of them says he wants to go work on the Obama campaign now. Let's hope so! [Creativity]

People still profess confusion about which ad man had his way with JC Penney's image, making an unauthorized teen sex ad and submitting it to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Neither the pissed-off retailer nor its apologetic ad agency would name names, and Ad Age yesterday concluded, "Just who is responsible for creation of the ad... is a bit cloudy." But it's not, really. Is it? It's got to be Mike Long, of Epoch Films. Read why, and watch one of Long's other "fake" Penney ads, this one a bit terrifying, after the jump.

The fantastically transgressive teen sex ad yesterday from middlebrow retailer JC Penney turned out not to be sanctioned by the company, predictably. That was just too much to hope for. But the fun part now is watching the fallout-after all, can you fucking imagine how pissed the JC Penney people are right now? They are very pissed. They company sent us a statement disavowing the ad last night, and now the ad agency has just sent its own statement explaining how it had, uh, nothing to do with this salacious underage sex production. Now we're just waiting for the third party-who is likely getting screamed at very loudly right now-to take responsibility. Official statements from the two main players after the jump, and our prediction for the next one to come:

That JC Penney commercial, which featured two teens practicing for a naked romp in the basement? The one that won a prize at the Cannes Lions Awards this weekend and spread quickly on the Web yesterday? It was an unauthorized fake, and executives at the department store are royally pissed. "It's obviously inappropriate and nothing we would ever condone," Penney's chief marketing officer told the Wall Street Journal. "We're very disappointed that our logo and brand position were used in that way." Thus began the blame game over who unleashed this mutant sorta-sex tape, one that will seem oh-so-familiar to anyone who recalls, say, the Miley Cyrus incident with Vanity Fair.

Well, it's official now: teen sex is okay with middle America. This momentous shift comes in the form of a new JC Penney ad, in which the thoroughly middlebrow retailer has a few laughs about two teen luvahs learning to put their clothes on quickly enough to avoid the mom of the house walking in on them doing the nasty. Forget the whole Miley Cyrus photo uproar! Go home, abstinence-preaching Christians! If JC Penney can sell three-packs of Hanes boxers to your family using a well-placed horny teen theme, well, it's time to lay the "controversy" of teenage sexuality to rest. They like to fuck-particularly on top of JC Penney products! Watch the commercial acknowledgment of biology and profound cultural moment for mall moms, after the jump: