♦ Kate Betts sits down with Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld for an interview, which was also filmed if you can cope with seeing Karl's ponytail up close. [Time]
♦ Suzy Menkes celebrates 20 years at the IHT, and fashion stars including Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Alber Elbaz, Anna Wintour, and John Galliano offer their video tributes. [The Moment]
♦ Sofia Coppola is designing a line of handbags and shoes for Louis Vuitton. The company must have searched far and wide to find this unknown talent so deserving of a break. [WWD]

["Vogue" editrix Anna Wintour with fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld at a Paris Fashion Week show today; image via Splash] seekingwhat's new line beats the original, "You Won't Believe Who I Have Tied Up Back At The Castle."

Hope a Fox News production assistant has been dispatched to pick up a big box of cupcakes: right-wing cable blowhard Bill O'Reilly is celebrating his 59th birthday today. Fellow News Corp. employee (and Irishman) Keith Kelly is turning 54. Guy Ritchie is celebrating his 40th. Manorexic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is 75 (although he tells people he's only 70). Ryan Phillippe is 34. Nightlife vet Tracy Westmoreland is 52. British actor Colin Firth is 48. Golfing great Arnold Palmer is 79. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry is 58. And Sanjaya Malakar, the former American Idol contestant best known for his hair styling talents, is turning 19.

• Albert Hammond Jr. is coming out with a men's clothing line, news that shouldn't surprise anybody. [NYM]

Karl Lagerfeld-designer, living statue, colonel in the German Gay Zombie Army-would like to show your child a little something. No, not his series-of-metal-braces-and-leather-straps genitalia! He's made a fancypants teddy bear that will retail at Neiman Marcus for a completely reasonable $1,500. Lagerfeld is very optimistic about the ursine species "bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them," but not so cheery when it comes to his own childhood: "I never played with anything like toys. I wanted to be grown-up." Oh very nice. Then he stood up and walked off into the sunset, a strange chorus of hums, whirs, and clicks emanating from his joints, which are fashioned out of old wheelchairs. [W]

Because Karl Lagerfeld is almost as decadent and weird as Dubai is, the two have decided to work together. The fashion designer will be designing 80 Chanel-brand "haute homes" for the ridiculously wealthy Arab Emirate, to be located on the wonderfully named-like something out of a 1970's Betty & Veronica comic-Fashion Island (well, Isla Moda). Fashion Island (a great place to spend a sexy weekend!) is situated within The World, perhaps Dubai's batshittiest real estate development. Well, maybe not. Lagerfeld is typically grandiloquent in his statement about the project:

• Gruesome twosome or match made in heaven? Karl Lagerfeld and Lady Bunny wowed the crowd last night at Visionaire and Lacoste's Paris couture fashion week party on a yacht on the Seine. [Elle]

[Fashion designer and completely strange person Karl Lagerfeld wearing a safety vest for a French PSA. The text roughly translates to: "It's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't go with anything, but it could save your life."; image via Fashion Copious, headline via Pareene]

Finally, the website for the "Grand Theft Auto IV" game is up. You can reportedly tune in to a radio station there and hear none other than designer/ DJ Karl Lagerfeld talking about "keeping things moving with the music that liberated all of us, taught us we were all the same, showed us that computers were our friends." Can't argue with the man's logic! Bonus, the game's slogan: "Liberty City: Overpriced real estate in a cultural wasteland." Hey, that sounds familiar. [via Agenda Inc.]

[Crazy old fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and friends outside the Waverly Inn last night; image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld at the Berlin Film Festival yesterday; image via WENN]

Newish Stuff editor Dan Bova's first editor's letter is a sendup of Chanel designer/vampire-grampy Karl Lagerfeld. According to WWD, Bova "wrote the editor's letter of his first full issue in the supposed voice of Karl Lagerfeld, focusing mostly on what Bova fabricates is the designer's taste for eating cats." We suppose this is what Dan is getting at when he says that Stuff is making a "concerted effort to go upscale," but we're unconvinced. We're talking about the author of the Karl Lagerfeld Diet here, the man who once said that his "only ambition in life" is to fit into size 28 jeans. You think he'd really be caught dead ingesting a calorie-crammed, full-fat feline?

Let Them Eat Cats [WWD]

Karl Lagerfeld, Boy Prince of Fashion [NYMag]

We don't see anorexic (girls). The girls are skinny. They have skinny bones.

• Taking a breather from Anna Wintour, PETA lists Paris Hilton as their worst-dressed celebrity. Other honorees include Kimberly Stewart and Tara Reid, because being a skank hurts the fuzzy animals. [Scoop]
• Ashley Olsen is late to Karl Lagerfeld's show at the Chanel store, then fails to recognize the designer when he waves to her. Such unacceptable behavior, you'd think Olsen were raised as a civilian or some such. [Page Six]
• The cab-stealing continues: Bill Maher swipes a taxi from a man with a BABY in a SNOWSTORM. Next up, stealing cabs from paraplegics with broken breathing tubes. [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• Don't you hate it when your cock is so huge that it has to be digitally erased? Oh, you don't have that problem? Scoff. [Page Six]
• Nancy Grace of CNN is suing her stalker for damages. Just so long as she keeps paying attention to him! [R&M]

· Karl Lagerfeld takes to the streets! If you ask nicely, he'll still tell you you're fat. [Verbose Coma]
· It's time for some Olsen-approved shag carpeting. These girls would slap their name on your fucking toenail, if they could. [Georgia Mills]
· Fox orders a third season of The O.C.; teenage girls, gay men, and Observer staffers rejoice. [Mediaweek]
· David Amsden finally writes about an adult! [Men.Style.Com]
· If you're easily delighted like a small child, check out the elephant walk. No, that's not a euphemism. PETA-esque protesting almost guaranteed. [Gothamist]

Word has been slowly circulating that Times bespectacled fashion critic Cathy Horyn will be relocating to Paris by spring 2006, but don't assume she's moving purely for the haute couture and Gauloises. The Daily is reporting that while Horyn will remain on staff with the Times, the real reason behind her move is to work on the biography of mildly-cracked designer Karl Lagerfeld. None too coincidentally, Horyn has penned a 6,000-word piece on la Lagerfeld for the paper's February 20th issue of T magazine and her adoration for the incredibly shrinking designer is no secret. The biography, then, is the natural next step. Sounds like a blissful union in fashion publishing heaven, but will she love him once he undoubtedly (and unjustifiably) forces her to go on the Karl Lagerfeld diet?

· It's been far too long since designer Karl Lagerfeld said something crazy, don't you think? The Express of London reports that he's called Nicole Kidman's body bizarre. Which would make your body utterly reprehensible, dear reader, and we don't know how you can leave the house looking like that. [Scoop]
· There's trouble in paradise on the set of Lindsay Lohan's new film Just My Luck, as "people who know" claim the actress is showing up to set late after spending her evenings out at New Orleans college bars. To which we say, like, duh. [Page Six]
· Oh, Simon Cowell, you silly bastard. The American Idol judge was overheard on his cell phone bemoaning the Idol contestants as "Usher wannabes" and claiming Kelly Clarkson was the only one with any real talent. We anticipate the Claymates are mobilizing their effeminate army at this very minute. [Page Six]
· Snoop Dogg will host this weekend's "Snooper Bowl," a charity concert and youth football game. Just because you're balancing nasty gang rape charges doesn't mean you can't do your charity work for children, right? [Lowdown]
· Real estate widow Leona Helmsley reportedly communicates with her dead husband Harry through her pocket-sized Maltese, Trouble. Ah, now it all makes sense! No, wait, it doesn't. [R&M]

· Everyone's hating on the pudgy people, including the formerly overweight designer Karl Lagerfeld, who expressed his displeasure with his H&M designs running up to size XXL. [R&M]
· We're guessing the Mets are hoping pitcher Kris Benson cheats on his stripper-cum-wife, Anna, as she's vowed to fuck the entire team if he strays from their marriage. [Page Six]
· Katie Couric's beau, jazz trumpeter Chris Botti, says that there is "definitely an advantage to dating someone in the entertainment industry." Not anymore, dumbass. [Lowdown (4th item)]
· Chronicling the fall of actor Jared Leto via blogging. [Page Six]
· Desperate Housewives star Nicolette Sheridan hawks a skincare product, but doesn't own up to her own plasticine face. [Scoop]