Julia Signs with Mango, Kelly Cutrone Gives Back
♦ Julia Restoin Roitfeld might call herself a designer, but apparently the fat fees from modeling are hard to resist: She's been cast in the new Mango campaign along with celebuspawn Dakota Johnson Griffith. [WWD]
♦ PR maven Kelly Cutrone may play a hard-nosed bitch on The Hills, but in real life she's all heart: After reading about Marie Conde, who fought with three muggers who snatched her purse, Cutrone collected gifts for the 26-year-old nurse's aide, including Longchamp purses, jewelry, and dinner at the SoHo Grand. [NYP]
♦ During an interview conducted, of course, lying down in a hotel room at Claridge's in London, Diane von Furstenberg is expansive on matters personal (such as her first and only female lover), her "naughtiness" during the seventies, and her political opinions: Barack Obama is "so intelligent and very detached... It gives him perspective." [Telegraph]
♦ On the set of his directorial debut The Single Man, Tom Ford is nice enough to meet and chat to extras. So they're topless young men, what does that have to do with anything? [Grazia]
♦ The new obsessive fashion tribe in Japan is hime gyarus, or princess girls, who look like dolls and wear pink, satin, and diamonds. We agree that Tinsree is to blame for this one. [WSJ]
♦ Showroom Seven owner Karen Erickson (known to many as the mother of The Fashionista Dairies' Mandie), who apparently sees no reason not to bite the hand that feeds her, thinks that buyers for designer stores are useless at their jobs: "They all buy the same thing, the same labels and the same point of view. No wonder retail is boring." [NYT]