>> INSIDER WIRE —I spoke too soon earlier today: the guest editor of Vogue Paris's December/January holiday issue is rumored to be Princess Stephanie of Monaco, daughter of Grace Kelly.  A bit of a change from the designers and muses chosen in the past — Charlotte Gainsbourg, John Galliano, Kate Moss and Sofia Coppola. [WWD]

>> Katie Grand is working on her last issue of POP as we speak, and it looks like, after twenty issues and eight years, it might be the last issue of POP ever. Although Bauer vowed that POP would continue on, post-Katie Grand, Hint is reporting that the initial intent thas "hit a snag" and POP is done.

Meanwhile, Katie's new larger, as-yet-untitled "bespoke" biannual for Conde Nast UK is rumored to have a title: Love.  If true, the name portends good things for the new project — a labor of love for Katie Grand.

*image: source

>> He's the man who brings you $1,500 Balmain cotton t-shirts — and those are the cheapest; They go up to $3,000 if you want sparkles.  Balmain is the word on everyone's lips — buyers, fans of fringed boots — and the fervor is reaching a fever pitch.

Christophe Decarnin came out of nowhere to head the house in 2005, and with every collection he does for Balmain, sales have doubled.  Cathy Horyn does a profile of the "colorless and shy" designer in the Women's Winter Fashion issue of T Magazine, examining why Balmain has been so successful in such a short time, especially when Decarnin took over the ailing house from "the fiasco of its last designer, Laurent Mercier, who liked to dress up as Jayne Mansfield and have people call him Lola."  So who and what does Decarnin, with his "French permagloom, his pale arms crossed over his white T-shirt, his black hair in greasy strands," and his "short, pathetic answers" have to thank for all the success?

The supercool girls.

"Balmain has become the label of the supercool girls . . . the girls in London and Paris who work as assistants at fashion magazines, design studios and P.R. firms, or who have some terrific family-tree connections they swing from. They’re 21 or 22 years old. Anyway, they’re crazy about clothes. Julia Restoin Roitfeld, whose mother is Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, wears Balmain. So does Eugenia Niarchos, Olympia Scarry, Gaia Repossi, Dasha Zhukova and Charlotte Casiraghi, a daughter of Princess Caroline."

He has Vogue Paris, but not the personality. »

We just want to hug Spork Fashion when she says she has a Fashion Week hangover after her time in Los Angeles as we feel like we are in a perpetual state of fashion week haze just about all the time. Make sure to check out her review of Crispin and Basilio

Senora Cartera reviews the Foley and Corinna Embossed Snake City Clutch. We find it quite handsome but then we are all over exotics pretty much all the time.

Chic and Untroubled reminds us that making a political statement with fashion isn't as important as actually engaging in civic behavior.

Thrift Eye goes through her archives to see if she does indeed have a way with mixing patterns. We are going with yes.

The Fashion Bomb went to the Levi's Holiday preview. Thank god someone went as we swore it was next week. We are so bad with events you know that?

Makeup and Beauty blog has 5 tips for storing your makeup but we are mostly fascinated with the creepy photo of a MAC lipstick in a tiny coffin. Is it a commentary on throwing away makeup that is past its sell by date maybe?

>> BLOWING THE COVER —A red swim cap makes its way onto two Vogue covers for November 2008: Vanessa Paradis in Miu Miu — since she is their Fall 2008 campaign girl — for Vogue Paris by Miu Miu campaign photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, and Alana Zimmer by Tom Munro for Russian Vogue.  Vogue Paris's next issue is their December/January issue, which always has a fun guest editor — Kate Moss, John Galliano, Charlotte Gainsbourg — but no announcement yet.  It has to come soon, right? [TFS, Supreme Being]

>> In this Madeline Kragh-centric episode of Model.Live, it's post-Fashion Week, and she's caught up in the mad cycle many models fall into: that of not being able to afford living in New York unless she's booking well-paying jobs, but not being able to book those good jobs unless she's based in New York.

For the time, she's back in New York with her boyfriend Jimmy, sleeping on couch cushions instead of a mattress and going into debt every week to her agency, IMG, who takes out money against her for housing, living costs, plane tickets, and even clothes for her to wear to go-sees.  But hey, at least she's making money: she's earned more in two days during campaign season than she did in all six weeks of runway shows — and she's apparently booked a campaign with a French designer that she "loooooves."  Madeline may be already dreading next Fashion Week, but she seems happy in the meantime — will Austria Alcantara be in the same high spirits post-Fashion Week?  Next week we'll see.