bits and baubles

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• America's Olympians have taken over the June issue of Vogue, with a cover featuring soccer player Hope Solo, swimmer Ryan Lochte, and tennis star Serena Williams. Lochte is the fourth man to be included on the cover of Vogue (the other three are Richard Gere, George Clooney, and LeBron James). Inside the magazine, Karlie Kloss poses alongside other athletes, like gymnast Jonathan Horton and basketball player Dwyane Wade. [Vogue]
  

• H&M has apologized for using an image of a tan-skinned Isabeli Fontana to advertise its Summer swimsuits after a Swedish anticancer group accused the brand of promoting "a beauty ideal that is deadly." H&M said in a statement that "It was not our intention to show off a specific ideal or to encourage dangerous behaviour, but was instead to show off our latest summer collection." [The New York Daily News]
  

• Lara Stone revealed how her husband, David Walliams, managed to woo her in the new issue of Vogue Netherlands: "He stalked me," she joked. Asked whether she thought their romance was sparked by love at first sight, Stone said, "To him it was!" [Vogue UK]
  

• Manolo Blahnik has signed a deal to expand his footprint in London. Shoe retailer Kurt Geiger will open a Manolo Blahnik shop-in-store at Harrods in time to sell the accessories brand's Fall 2012 collection. Kurt Geiger opened a similar space for Blahnik at Liberty London this February. [Vogue UK]
  

• The May issue of L'Uomo Vogue is dedicated to "Rebranding Africa." Editor Franca Sozzani said she wanted to portray African nations in a favorable light. "Presenting a positive image of the continent means focusing world attention on an area that has been hitherto excluded," she said. [Fashion Etc.]
  

• Meanwhile, Sozzani's other magazine Vogue Italia recently shot a spread featuring reality star Kim Kardashian. [@KimKardashian]
  

• Model Lily Kwong has big plans for after she graduates from Columbia University. Kwong, who is Joseph Altuzarra's cousin, says she will travel on behalf of her new charity Nuvana, which helps empower the youth in poor communities. [Lifestyle Mirror]

Photo courtesy of Vogue.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Rihanna's second collection for Emporio Armani has been revealed — or at least the sketches of it have. The collection will include tartan-trimmed denim shorts and a distressed denim jumpsuit. "She captures the young and contemporary essence of Emporio Armani Underwear and Armani Jeans perfectly," said Giorgio Armani. [Fashion Etc.]
  

• Carine Roitfeld is putting together a staff for her new magazine, CR Fashion Book. So far, she's hired former Teen Vogue accessories director Shiona Turini and stylist Michaela Dosamantes, who was most recently a contributing fashion and market editor for Vogue.it. [The Cut]
  

• Giorgio Armani has revealed the Olympic uniforms he designed for Italy's national team. The 50-piece collection includes everything from tracksuits to suitcases and was designed under his EA7 Emporio Armani sportswear line. [Vogue UK]
  

• Abbey Lee Kershaw and Edita Vilkeviciute join Tom Cruise on the May cover of W magazine. Cruise is dressed (well, tattooed, anyway) as his character from the upcoming movie Rock of Ages, and Kershaw and Vilkeviciute stand in as glamorous groupies. [Fashion Gone Rogue]

Photo Courtesy of W magazine.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Carey Mulligan will sell the gold-and-silver Prada dress she wore to Monday's Met Gala on eBay and will donate the proceeds from the sale to Oxfam America. The auction ends on May 19. Bidding started last night at $500. As of this post, the highest bid was $1,025. [The Cut]
  

• Vogue India will follow in the footsteps of its sister magazines in the United States, Italy, and the UK by establishing a Fashion Fund to support young designers. The magazine wants Indian talent to be able to compete with incoming established Western luxury brands. [Material World]
  

• Andrej Pejic was the only man to be cast in the Rosa Clara show during Barcelona's Bridal Week. Pejic has walked as many men's runways as women's runways and closed Jean Paul Gaultier's Summer 2011 couture show in a tiered wedding dress. [The Huffington Post]
  

• Menswear blogger Lawrence Schlossman says he and friend Kevin Burrows are responsible for the cult Tumblr F*ck Yeah Menswear. Schlossman and Burrows had been running the blog anonymously since October 2010 but stopped posting when they were offered a book deal last November. [The New York Observer]
  

• And finally, because it's Thursday, here's a picture of Karl Lagerfeld's cat Choupette playing with an iPad. [@KarlLagerfeld]

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Vidal Sassoon, often referred to as the "founder of hairdressing," was found dead in his Los Angeles home on Wednesday. Sassoon was 84. His death is attributed to an unspecified illness, but he has reportedly suffered from leukemia and was diagnosed with blood cancer in 2009. [The Huffington Post]
  

• Chanel announced that it has selected Brad Pitt to be the face of its iconic fragrance Chanel No. 5. Pitt is the first man to be selected for the position. He joins Nicole Kidman, Catherine Deneuve, Audrey Tatou, and Marilyn Monroe on the list of the scent's ambassadors. [Chanel]
  

• Piperlime is opening its first brick-and-mortar store in New York's SoHo neighborhood. A spokesman for the Gap-owned retailer said, "The store will have a women's focus. We will have clothing and we'll be showing our disproportionate love of shoes and accessories." [Racked]

  Photo: Vidal Sassoon at his induction as a Commander of the British Empire in 2009.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Hermès doesn't sell its Birkin handbags online, but flash sale sites like Gilt, Rue La La, and MyHabit do. Here's a look at how they ensure authenticity. [BuzzFeed]
  

• A new deal with Sandow Media will expand Fred Segal beyond its Southern California roots. The retailer is expected to set up shops in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, as well as in Europe and Asia, with the first of the new stores opening some time next year. [Racked]
  

• Karl Lagerfeld has signed on to give the exterior of Monaco's Hotel Métropole a redesign. The first part of the project, which involves refreshing the hotel's pool, terrace, gardens, and a new restaurant, will be unveiled in July. [The Daily Telegraph]
  

• Paco Rabanne's artistic director Manish Arora is leaving the brand after designing just two season's worth of clothing and despite the fact that Arora's designs had gotten favorable press coverage. Lady Gaga even wore one of his dresses to the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards. [The Cut]
  

• Iris Apfel will debut her own handbags in collaboration with HSN, which also sells her jewelry line. The bags are made from Mongolian lamb's wool, snakeskin, and calf hair, and will retail for $228 to $398. [WWD]
  

• Greg Kessler's latest installment of Model-Morphosis shows off Chanel's most popular lacquers. Nails go from unadorned to coated with the flick of a mouse. [T Magazine]
  

• Nicola Formichetti will debut an eponymous fashion label next year. The clothes will be "digitally oriented and high-tech . . . Why do you have to have a zipper when you can have a jacket that's molded to your body?" Formichetti explained. [Styleite]

  Photo: A Birkin snapped on the streets during Milan Menswear Week in January 2012.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Tracy Feith has signed a deal to be a full-time designer for TOMS shoes, his first high-profile job since unexpectedly shuttering his business in 2011. Feith has been a consultant for the brand's founder Blake Mycoskie for a few months now and in his new role will be focused on the higher-priced TOMS+ line of shoes. [Fashionista]
  

• Cindy Crawford, her mother, Jennifer Crawford-Moluf, and her daughter, Kaia Gerber, all star in a new JC Penney commercial designed to remind viewers about Mother's Day on Sunday, May 13. In it, Kaia — who recently starred in a campaign for Versace's children's wear line — says Cindy is "just the best mom in the world. I mean, she's so nice and I can actually hang out with her and have fun." [The Daily Telegraph]
  

• Vena Cava's Lisa Mayock says that her brand's expansion deal with Li & Fung means that the brand is going to change and grow sooner than expected. "We're working on more collections and a few surprises in the next couple of months; maybe some lower price points." [Daily Front Row]
  

• Neon nail polish technically isn't approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration, which has to authorize new beauty products before they hit the market. "Colorants used to create, neon, day-glo or glow-in-the-dark nail polishes have not gone through the FDA approval process, so technically they are not allowed for use for nail polish applications," said Doug School, chief scientific officer for Creative Nail Design. [Fashion Etc.]
  

• Salvatore Ferragamo is renewing its It brand status thanks to its clothing and shoes being seen on the backs of stars like Lady Gaga. "You can not just decide one day you want to target a younger customer, but it's just something that we see happening," said the brand's CEO Michele Norsa. [Forbes]

  Photo: Neon nails on Christian Dior's Spring 2011 runway.

Our daily news roundup.

• Ashton Kutcher plays a Karl Lagerfeld-inspired character in a new ad for Pop Chips. Kutcher wears a white wig, dark sunglasses, and plenty of silver accessories as his character Darl talks about what he looks for in a date. "Money creates taste, and I have lots of both," Darl quips. [Styleite]
  

• Bygone couture label Mainbocher and shoe line Herbert Levine, among other shuttered brands, are set to relaunch in the near future thanks to French investor Arnaud de Lummen. De Lummen is known for restarting Vionnet in 2006 before selling it to Matteo Marzotto and Gianni Castiglioni in 2009. "When you relaunch, you already have a story to tell. After a few years, people completely forget that the brand was dormant," De Lummen said. [Vogue UK]
  

• Tom Ford's Spring 2012 menswear lookbook has been called risqué for featuring images of a near-naked male model — and a female model wearing nothing but a towel on her head. [Fashionista]
  

• Balmain launched its first social medial profiles on Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday. "We have product and pictures and creations to show, and we’re ready to communicate with the followers," said the brand's CEO Emmanuel Diemoz. [WWD]
  

• Speaking of social media, model and blogger Hanneli Mustaparta has been tapped as a contributor to Calvin Klein's new Tumblr page. Mustaparta will write about her behind-the-scenes experiences with the brand. [Calvin Klein]
  

• Aquascutum might be saved from bankruptcy thanks to Chinese firm YGM Trading, which has begun taking steps to buy the label. If the sale goes through, YGM would own Aquascutum entirely — it already owns the brand's intellectual property rights and controls sales of Aquascutum in Asia. [The Cut]

Photo courtesy of Tom Ford

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Naomi Campbell is set to star in her very own reality modeling show called The Face. The show, which will air on Oxygen starting next year, will see Campbell and two other as-of-yet-undetermined supermodels supervising three teams of models who will compete until one is chosen as the face of a brand in the United States. "With The Face the audience will get a real insider's look at this exciting industry that has been so good to me," Campbell said. [The Huffington Post]
  

• Kate Moss is donating a portrait of herself taken by Solve Sundsbo to a May 17 auction sponsoring Britain's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The portrait features Moss wearing nothing but a pair of gold pants and crossing her arms to cover her breasts. Its starting price is £3,000, or $4,866 at current exchange. [Vogue UK]
  

• Linda Evangelista will find out this week whether a judge will grant her the $46,000 a month in child support she requested from PPR CEO François-Henri Pinault to help raise their 5-year-old son, Augustin. Evangelista revealed that Pinault was Augustin's father when she filed for child support in late 2011. Pinault is married to actress Salma Hayek; the two have a 4-year-old daughter named Valentina. [The Cut]
  

• Alice Temperley is working with British high street label John Lewis on a capsule collection that will debut in September. Called Somerset by Alice Temperley, the line will range from $50 scarves to a $1,600 sheepskin coat. Day dresses will hit the $160 mark. "I wanted it to be very much a collection of essentials and to design a collection that would provide a feminine and functional wardrobe for women in their everyday life," Temperley said. [The Daily Telegraph]
  

• There's been no formal explanation of why The Gap fired its creative director Patrick Robinson, but former members of the retailer's executive team say "his designs seemed lost on Gap customers." He also didn't want customers to see clothes styled any other way than how he showed them originally. "Merchants were literally told, 'You don’t get to change the product as it's presented,'" one former merchant recalled. [Fashionista]
  

>> Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Today is Kirsten Dunst's 30th birthday, and what better way to celebrate her acting and modeling career — which she started at age 3 in a commercial for Kix cereal — than by taking a look back at her style transformation? [InStyle]
  

• Nick Wooster, who was fired from his position as men's fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman last year, has landed a new job as the creative director of menswear at JC Penney. Wooster was let go two days after GQ published an interview in which he said, "I am just an old midget queen who, you know, had the good fortune to get this job and it's like, 'How did that happen?'" [NYP]
  

• Former Vogue special events director Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is leaving her current position as fashion director at Lincoln Center to start her own agency. With SWW Creative, Wolkoff's goal is to "forge new partnerships in fashion, beauty and entertainment." [WWD]
  

• Victoria Beckham's 9-month-old daughter, Harper, is still in diapers, but she's already received her first modeling offer. In an open letter to the youngest Beckham, baby clothing company My First Year wrote, "Both your parents are fashion icons, and we can see no reason why you shouldn't start your own career in the fashion industry even at your young age . . . You were therefore the immediate first choice for our campaign." Whether Victoria and David sit Harper in front of the camera remains to be seen. [Stylelist]
  

• Is it harder for female designers to succeed in New York fashion than it is for men? In a new column, Nicole Phelps analyzes why many of the woman-oriented industry's most celebrated talents are men. "Part of the story seems to be that male designers strive for art while female designers strive for humanity, and this difference influences, even defines, the success they achieve," she writes. [Style.com]

  Photo: Kirsten Dunst at the London premiere of Melancholia

>> Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.