The jury has delivered their verdict in the Anand Jon Alexander model-raping case. With a mindblowing 23 counts of rape and sexual assault filed against him in L.A. County Superior Court, Jon was found guilty of 16 of them. WaxWord reports:

♦ Did you attempt to get your hands on some Comme des Garçons for H&M today? You're braver than us. [Racked]
♦ Cathy Horyn provides a clear-eyed assessment of Barack Obama's sartorial style, pointing out that "his jeans are the loose, jingle-the-change-in-your-pocket type. He belts them at the waist, and when he wears them with white sneakers and a windbreaker, one could almost say he had stolen the look from Jerry Seinfeld's character on the television series." [NYT]
♦ At Diane von Furstenberg's party for Financial Times editor Vanessa Friedman, André Leon Talley broadcast his delight over Obama's victory in the most appropriate way: The back of his coat was emblazoned with "The New American Dream" in crystals. [WWD]
♦ Also gushing about the Obamas? Donna Karan, who says: "I'm hoping to get to work with them—it would be my dream. They are so committed to ideals that are much in alignment with mine." [WWD]

• Ashley Dupre seems to have found a new married man to take her to expensive hotels and treat her to drinks from the minibar. After spending the day shopping in Midtown (left), she checked into the Gramercy Park Hotel with Thomas "TJ" Earle, who owns a New Jersey asphalt company and lives in a "McMansion" with his wife and two kids. [NYP]

Perhaps to our discredit, we had long ago relegated disgraced fashion designer/tacky Web-site proprietor Anand Jon Alexander to the quiet corners of our minds where accused serial rapists like him (59 counts, at last check) await trial. Sharon Waxman, meanwhile — who extensively interviewed AJ and pored over eight volumes of grand jury transcripts for an article in the new issue of Los Angeles — acknowledges that the testimony of the aspiring models he allegedly assaulted is both "damning" and "extremely weak in places," implying that Alexander's case may not be as open-and-closed as we'd suspected once it goes to trial in September. "Anand Jon does not appear to be a nice guy," she writes. "But that is not a crime in any state."

For those who have not been keeping up with the Anand Jon case — and really, who could possibly be perverse enough to keep up with the Anand Jon case? — here's the story so far: Until last month, the India-born, Miami-raised Jon was a minimally talented fashion "designer" more or less kept in celebrity orbit by the general gravitational field of the Paris Hilton Star System. He liked girls. On March 4, an Internet-arranged "encounter" with an aspiring model ended in a charge of rape. Within weeks, at least 11 other women, including a 14-year-old, came forward with similar allegations against Jon. All this is recounted exactingly in "The Designer Who Liked Models," an article by Sharon Waxman in today's Times Sunday Styles. Where's the Weekend geistiness, you ask? Meet Ronald Richards, Anand Jon's attorney/wingman: