>>  Marion Hume of The Observer always does these fantastic profiles for the Sunday paper, and this time around it's Manolo Blahnik, who sounds off on his shoe pet peeve: platforms, the strangest place he's seen his shoes, and whether he uses Botox or not.  Entertaining, to say the least.  But then, like I said, Ms. Hume's profiles always are.

>> Forbes magazine recently did their roundup of the world's billionaires, and lo-and-behold, those French fashion rivals Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinault both made the cutoff.  Arnault, CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (read: Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, to name a couple) and Christian Dior SA, came in at 7th richest person in the world.  Pinault, owner of PPR (read: YSL, Balenciaga, to name a couple) rang in at 34th richest person in the world, poor man. 

Although Pinault might win in the end after all -- his son Francois-Henri just announced his engagement to Salma Hayek, who is expecting their first child.

>>  Marc Jacobs has always been very open about his past substance abuse problems,  and it seems that nothing has changed.  Recently Mister Marc hit seven years of sobriety, but Jacobs' business partner Robert Duffy announced today that shortly after showing Louis Vuitton in Paris, Jacobs flew to a rehabilitation center in Arizona to treat a relapse of drug and alcohol abuse.  I can't say I'm too surprised, he had been looking a bit haggard during the fall shows, but may he make a full recovery and come back to us soon (especially after his bang-up eponymous collection, I can't wait to see the follow-up)!