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

Amanda Brooks says she'll focus on her writing during her upcoming stay in England.

Brooks broke her blogosphere silence this week for the first time since last February with a post on her site I Love Your Style. In it, she explained that she will be taking a yearlong "creative sabbatical" when she moves with her family to a farmhouse in Oxfordshire, England, this Summer.

"First on my agenda? To get my blog and up and running again," Brooks wrote. "I also have ambitious writing plans for the next year, and you all will be the first to know about them as they unfold."

Since that post went live, Brooks has written one post a day. The most recent one focuses on trench coats designed by Junya Watanabe.

Brooks had been the fashion director of Barneys since February 2011, but she announced she would leave the retailer in March to pursue other opportunities. She released the fashion advice book I Love Your Style in 2009 and launched her blog of the same name in 2010.

As large and well documented as her fashion collection is, Anna Dello Russo says she's "not a fan" of vintage clothing. The Vogue Japan editor talked about this distaste in a recent Financial Times Q&A with Emilio Pucci's Peter Dundas.

"I like to consider myself the guardian of fashion. When I moved house 10 years ago, I had 4,000 pairs of shoes. I had to buy a bigger home to store all the clothes because I need closets, not kitchens, and many are now in my house in Bari [in the southern Puglia region]. I'm super tidy so every item is catalogued, stored in garment bags with tissue paper, perfumed, and on hangers that are all the same. But I'm not a vintage fan — I don't like the smell of old clothes."

Dello Russo applies similar standards when it comes to accessories and loungewear. "I'm also not a fan of bags, because anything that is practical isn't handsome; if anything I like clutches. Pajamas and tracksuits are sloppy so I only wear Abercrombie & Fitch tracksuits to go to my yoga class. If you dress comfortably, you don't get the look," she says.

Miuccia Prada has reportedly taken control of planning the Costume Institute's upcoming Met Gala — even down to the smallest details.

Prada has been quite vocal on everything from the guest list to what kind of alcohol those guests will drink. Sources told Alexa that when it came time for event planners to choose a beverage sponsor for the event, Prada insisted on an Italian Prosecco brand. She also decided on the location of the afterparty and has created an exclusive list of people who are allowed to wear her designs to the party. Gala cochair Carey Mulligan is said to be among them.

Met Gala veteran Coco Rocha, however, is not. According to Alexa, Rocha is bucking the trend of attending the gala with a designer, and will instead walk the red carpet with her husband James Conran. She plans to wear a vintage Givenchy dress she bought a few months ago. "This is actually the first time I've ever worn something that wasn't fitted by the designer himself," she said. "I did take the vintage Givenchy piece to my friend Zac Posen and to Vogue and they all agreed that it fits perfectly, no need for tailoring!"

Photo: Miuccia Prada and Anna Wintour announcing the Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations exhibit during Fall 2012 Milan Fashion Week.