• Yippee!  NY Times' T Magazine is expanding and getting a website this fall
• Ahem... Nary a Conde Nast crony in sight on Vanity Fair's Annual International Best-Dressed List
• Attaboy!  Alaia, free and clear of The Prada Group
• Speaking of, this lady collects vintage Alaia: Kate Young, stylist extraordinaire

>>  There's just something about poppies, and it's not because there's an opiate involved. 

Well, maybe a little - there is that smoky allure of an opium den attached.  But really, it's that vivid red that makes this poppy necklace so sensational.  Worn with the simplest of black dresses - that's all you need, with such imagery adorning your neck.

>> An excerpt from the article:

In its day the dress was extremely modern, even daring. Fortuny sought out new colors dreamed up by chemists and pioneered a way to pleat silk with tiny folds by treating it with metallic salts.

This is in the early twentieth century, but can you imagine - pleating silk with salts?  How quaintly archaic.  I'm just in awe.

But that's not the only thing that caught my attention - something about the accompanying picture of Ms. Oates is just so inspirational to me - the little straw hat, the wizened face, the bobbed brown hair, and the red shirt... there's just this unexplainable magnetism.

>>  I've been scouring Ebay for pieces of this late seventies Dior ad campaign, shot by Chris von Wangenheim.  So far I've turned up some really great shots - there's Jerry Hall on the top right, and Gia Carangi on the bottom left.  I've really been digging the faded colors and the glamour of seventies photography, and the slogans on these ("Unabashed is Your Dior") are one-of-a-kind.