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There will be a second hearing, on Dec. 11, in the case pitting Françoise Bettencourt Meyers against the photographer François-Marie Banier.

Hundreds of streetwear fanatics lined up for the reopening of the Supreme store on Lafayette Street this morning. The crowd was eager to get their hands on fresh fall merchandise after the store had been closed a whole two weeks for restocking. The first people in line — which stretched two blocks long — camped out since Tuesday night to have first pick of the goods. Jesus Ayala, 31, took yesterday and today off from his Department of Education job to secure his spot in the front. When the store opened at 11 a.m., Ayala got past the bouncer right away, and spent about $700 on a gray hoodie, camouflage pants, a belt, and a few T-shirts. Who says people aren't spending?

Read more posts by Sam Dangremond

Filed Under: photo op, reopenings, shopping, streetwear, supreme

Tommy Hilfiger has been looking for a creative director since at least 2007, and rumor has it Peter Som is in talks with the label to assume a consulting role there. After sitting a season out of Fashion Week, Som will return with a spring 2010 presentation in Milk Studios. "Anything you’ve said no to before, you should look at it in a different way," Som told us recently. A Hilfiger announcement is expected after Fashion Week. [FWD]

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: designers, peter som, rumor mill, tommy hilfiger

Yesterday when we were talking about the skunk fur monstrosity that Fendi has chosen to perpetrate on the fashion world at large, several commenters mentioned that the bag itself might be cute, if it weren’t for the formerly stinky dead animal hanging precipitously from it. I applaud those commenters for trying to look beyond the obvious awfulness.

And as luck would have it, Fendi saw fit to make a non-skunkified version for our significantly increased viewing pleasure, and as it turns out, the Fendi Peekaboo Roll Bag is not nearly as terrible as its hairy predecessor.

As it turns out, when you remove the fur, the bag is perfectly fine. It’s not dazzling, but it has the sort of blank-canvas appeal that means Fendi could turn it into a thousand different things, just like they did with their greatest success, the Baguette. I don’t think that this particular purse will get similarly launched into the fashion stratosphere, but they’ll probably find some fairly entertaining ways to adorn it, just like they did with the Peekaboo Satchel.

It’s non-offensive, the shape subscribes to one of the prevailing trends of the moment, and they could do some decent things with it, if they so chose. Looks like I’ve found a Fendi bag about which I don’t have a bunch of hater-y things to say. Surprising. Buy through Saks for $1460.

Jennifer Connelly's full fall 2009 campaign for Balenciaga is finally out. An early image revealed her lying supine on an overstuffed velvet couch, as though she just woke up from a wild night of partying with a terrible hangover and wants to do unkind things to the person who dares to photograph her in such a state. The new images offer more of the same: sexy furniture askew, crooked poses, shoes and clothes for which we would do things we can't even reveal. See the full campaign in the slideshow. Your thoughts are welcome, as always, in the comments!

Balenciaga's Full Fall 2009 Campaign, Featuring a Contortionist Jennifer Connelly, Finally Drops [Fashionologie]

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: advertising, balenciaga, campaign trail, designers, fall 2009, jennifer connelly, slideshow

Richard Chai – Love.

Richard Chai is launching a men's and women's contemporary line for spring 2010 named Richard Chai – Love. "It’s inspired by my girl, who’s in love with the guy that I dress. They’re not carbon copies of each other, but they go hand in hand," Chai says of the line, which he decided to do after successfully testing lower-priced, casual items at his brother's East Village store, Pas de Deux, since last year. The designer plans to debut the 40-piece collection at his Fashion Week show on September 12. [WWD]

Read more posts by Sharon Clott

Filed Under: chai town, designers, new york fashion week spring 2010, richard chai

So pretty.

Model Jourdan Dunn's comp card is included in Women modeling agency's show package for the spring 2010 season. This means the 19-year-old is hitting the casting circuit, even though she's five months pregnant with her boyfriend's child (word is she's having a boy). Oh, models. She must barely be showing, if at all. Like Gisele. We look forward to seeing her work it next week! [Models.com via Fashionologie]

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: jourdan dunn, models, pregnant models

Models of the Runway should have been totally genius: Take the tall, hungry catwalkers from its sister show Project Runway, and show the audience what they're bitching about when they leave the designers' workroom. But when it premiered two weeks ago, we went from saying during the main titles, "Bravo must be kicking itself for not coming up with this years ago," to saying during the end credits, "Bravo must be so relieved it never tried to do this." Because while the concept is solid, the execution left much to be desired — in fact, as Christian Siriano might say, it was a hot mess. But the question isn't even so much where Models went wrong, as whether this blighted offspring can ever go right.

In the broadest sense, the show suffers from the competition itself being essentially nonexistent, and therefore dumb. The rules are, one model leaves every time a designer gets booted, and the model paired with the winning designer gets a magazine spread and some cash. This is not the same as being a winner themselves. There is no real referendum on the models' actual walking or posing ability; for all we know she could develop a random third eye or a raging case of drunkface whenever a flash goes off. At least on Top Model, when a terrible model wins, you have the satisfaction of knowing her body of work was examined to determine she's at least marginally less terrible than her competitors. On Models of the Runway, it’s totally feasible that the best designer might happen to have the worst taste in models — and yet that model will emerge the de facto victor. There is no genuine tension, because the whole setup is basically a competition to win something because somebody else who won something better randomly picks your name out of a hat. So it's hard to care when the girls pout and whine that they might be "up for elimination," since their fate is wholly in the hands of a bunch of people who are barely featured in this half-hour, and who never give actual feedback or have to explain their decisions. It almost makes us miss Tyra Banks and her merry — if only marginally qualified — band of Top Model panelists.

This brings us to our second beef: the rest of the show. We imagined MotR would have almost a behind-the-scenes, lost-footage-style feel, informing what we've been watching on Project Runway — for instance, the look on Naked Model's face when she realizes her designer is sending her down the runway in a sheer piece of fabric sewn to an Elizabethan ruff on downers. We want to hear the girls flee the workroom whispering about the heinous clothes, or dumping on the lousy designers and sucking up to the talented ones. But instead, every Models episode kicks off backstage at the runway show as a designer gets cut and ends with one of the models meeting the same fate; in competition terms, time between those events is DEAD TIME. That's when the designers are, like, napping and doing interviews and crocheting Nina Garcia voodoo dolls, and without the designers we have a hard time investing in any of the models. Worse, while we’re treading water waiting to learn which woman is arbitrarily eliminated, we've being forced to sit through segments where models try on shoes at Nine West, do squats, and clean the kitchen. We understand that if MotR rewinds and drops you in the middle of a Project Runway story arc that you just saw play out, it risks feeling like a retread, but if we wanted to watch women complain at the gym, do housework, and then buy shoes from a mall store, we’d just get out a mirror.

This basic structural conundrum is why we fear Models of the Runway may be doomed to be great on paper, but poor on tape: It only has a life if it works hand-in-glove with the original, and there's no easy way to do that. It will go a long way toward helping, though, if MoTR finds a way to stir in more of what's only being hinted at so far: infighting, politicking with the designers, and good old-fashioned shit-stirring. Not a model quite literally Windexing the stove in her bathrobe. Here’s hoping tonight’s episode ups the ante, because if that's all you've got, folks, then we're afraid we’re going to turn auf our TV sets.

For more of the Fug Girls, check out Go Fug Yourself.

Read more posts by The Fug Girls

Filed Under: models of the runway, new york fugging city, television

Are you all on Twitter? (Follow us!). If so, you will know Twitter is one of the greatest ways to see what your favorite designers, magazines, and websites are doing. One of our favorite mags and websites, Marie Claire, gave us an ‘in’ on the 9 clutches they are coveting.

From $68-$1550, Marie Claire picks a wide range of prices and variety of clutches that they say link downtown edge with uptown glamour: At the end of long and short hardware straps, textured clutches swing with flair. Choices include some Purse Blog favorites, including Anya Hindmarch, Tory Burch, and Derek Lam. More info at Marie Claire.

Every year Duck Brand sponsors a contest for high-school students to see who can make the best prom outfit out of different colors of duct tape. When we saw some top competitors this year, we thought, How resourceful! At under $5 a roll, putting one of these together would cost thousands less than gowns featured in, say, Vogue. And now that party season is kicking up again, a duct-tape dress might be just the thing to really make a statement. So we challenged a Duck Brand designer to make a red-carpet gown out of twenty rolls of duct tape in three weeks. The finished creation was flown in and hand-delivered from Ohio, and it turned out to be a hybrid of neon mermaid and Bette Midler costume, with a corsage to match. We then took our duct-tape couture to the streets to see if the idea would "stick." A few girls suggested it wasn't first-date material, a tourist thought it looked like a tarp, and a bystander thought it was perfect for a black-tie affair. Check out if it's truly party-worthy in the video.

Earlier: Will You Be Our Date to the Duct-Tape Prom?

Read more posts by Sharon Clott

Filed Under: duck brand, duct tape, duct tape prom, in which we embarrass ourselves, recession-friendly clothes, video