>> Philip Treacy is hoping to convince Brad Pitt to play him in the biopic he's putting together about Isabella Blow — "but it's wishful thinking and perhaps not very likely I know," he told Vogue UK. And he's got John Galliano signed on to play himself, Max Nesome writing the screenplay and Anders Palm producing. There's only been a hint about who might play Issie — but her widower, Detmar Blow, has piped up on who he thinks should do the job: “Rachel Weisz.” [WWD]

>> Bottega Veneta is offering a livestream of its show for the first time on Saturday, Sept. 25 at 9:30 am EST, but they're not taking the democratic approach that usually goes along with such a move. Instead, the livestream is invitation-only and offered specifically to top costumers or invited guests unable to travel to Milan. Post-show, those viewers will receive a digital lookbook and be able to reserve the Spring 2011 merchandise immediately after on the brand's website. “Our goal is to put this technology to the service of our customers,” explains creative director Tomas Maier on the press release. “We would like to share the excitement and beauty of the live runway show with them, and to do so within the privacy and calm of the Bottega Veneta environment.”

>> Anna Dello Russo attended the Spring 2011 Prada show in a sparkly watermelon headpiece, and backstage, Miuccia Prada, who sent a banana-print shirt and skirts down the runway, wore dangly banana earrings, which she said she made for the show but her assistant wouldn't let her put them in. Prada show guests were served fruit-shaped candies, and yesterday, Dello Russo not only wore a strawberry-printed Yves Saint Laurent dress, but a cherry headpiece, too, from the same Milanese shop she bought the watermelon hat: Alan Journo. Needless to say, the Italian fashion segment is feeling a fruit motif.

>> After disappearing in February 2009, Jane Mayle is back with a Fall 2010 capsule collection of dresses, coats, tops, handbags, called Kamikaze Full of Love, plus shoes and boots in collaboration with Sigerson Morrison (sketch at left), all launching today at the Sigerson Morrison Laboratory Boutique on 19 East 71st Street in Manhattan. The line will be available through Oct. 14, and new goods are expected to arrive at the store each week.

Mayle describes the line as "the result [of] only making things because I feel like it rather than being constrained to do so. The pop-up is titled 'Kamikaze of Love' for a reason. The pieces are only those that I want to wear now and don't necessarily work together as a "collection" because I didn't feel the regular dictates of the industry to flesh out a design story for the purposes of things hanging together in any other place than my own closet. This really is my wardrobe of right now."

So does this indicate a return to fashion? "There's so much about this pop-up approach that I find very appealing. It feels very light which is definitely the most appropriate incarnation of Mayle for now. I'm enjoying not knowing if there will be more Mayle in a fashion context and being open to what might come next or what I'm moved to put out there — I'm looking forward to surprising myself. I feel so lucky that I now get to respond to my mood of the moment and create something from that and then move on to another medium or collaboration. That fluidity and variety is bliss! There's a floating sort of ease to the pieces which I'm really enjoying and there were just fabrics I couldn't resist and got me on the subway and up into the garment district again . . . they made me do it!"

Images of the collection can be seen here and here.

>> When Alexander McQueen was showing in the mid-'90s, he had Trino Verkade telephone three florists to wrangle heather and thistles for his Highland Rape show and then convince Liberty to mail the invitations for another one of his shows. “Honestly, I was trashy in the way I got money,” Ms. Verkade says. “It was also a time in London when everything was depressed. We were young.”

Now, however, sponsorships and corporate awards are more prevalent in London than anywhere else, and "most young designers, the thinking goes," writes Cathy Horyn, "couldn’t afford the costs of exposure without them." But, she continues, "the new generation of designers, while not exactly having it easy, has certainly been exposed to the system of sponsorships. And you wonder if it’s good for creativity . . . That almost childish refusal to take full responsibility for how their work is presented — as Mr. McQueen and [Hussein] Chalayan did [in the '90s and early '00s] — also seems to retard their creative powers."

Louise Wilson, the influential director of Central Saint Martins's master's program, says: “There is this omnipresent support here in England, and I’ll tell you what it’s done. There’s no risk. I think this generation has never chosen how they want to show.” Instead, the young designers rely on spaces financed by the likes of Topshop, and Wilson thinks they are not “looking for solutions to their own problems.” Chalayan agrees: "[Young designers] “are concerned about what the City thinks” — meaning potential backers and sponsors.