• Valentino didn't lose money in a giant Ponzi scheme. He did, however, just lose $39 million to the government of Italy. [NYM]
• Neiman Marcus is laying off 375 staffers. [WWD]
• That giant Forever 21 in Times Square? It's actually going to be a Century 21. [Reuters]
• Disney and Sephora have lots in common. [NYT]
• Liz Claiborne is expected to report big losses for the fourth quarter. Isaac to the rescue! [WSJ]
• Alas, no bar is planned for Topshop. [Racked]
• Annie Leibovitz was spotted at the Hay-Adams in DC yesterday, suggesting Michelle Obama could be on the cover of March's Vogue. [Politico, via]

This past summer we asked if famed photographer Annie Leibovitz was a deadbeat. Now we have an answer. She owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, two lawsuits claim.

Annie Leibovitz sat down with CNN yesterday for an extended interview to promote her new book. The whole Miley Cyrus scandal from this past spring didn't come up—just an oversight on the reporter's part, we're sure!—but Annie did address one of her other high-profile run-ins, the shoot in 2007 with the Queen of England when she got into hot water for daring to ask Her Majesty to remove her crown. Video of Annie's meandering explanation is above.

♦ Mary-Kate Olsen was "acting very oddly" during her stay in Miami for Art Basel. After getting into a fight with Kirsten Dunst at a party at the Delano on Wednesday night, MK—who "looked like she had not brushed her hair in a week"—spent the weekend drinking, chain-smoking, and hanging out with boyfriend Nate Lowman, which means she's probably not pregnant. [P6, P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan went to a party for Milk without Samantha Ronson last week, where she was spotted nuzzling with Sean Penn. [Fox 411]
♦ Amy Winehouse's husband Blake Fielder-Civil is reportedly threatening to write a tell-all book about Winehouse unless she gives him $1.7 million in the divorce settlement. [NYP]

Money troubles appear to be piling up for Annie Leibovitz. Back in August, court records indicated that the famed photographer had racked up $715,000 in debt related to renovations on her townhouse in the West Village and unpaid taxes. Now she has another hefty bill to worry about: A stylist she worked with on a series of photo shoots is suing her for failing to pay her firm more than $400,000. [NYP]

The Tribeca Film Institute hosted a benefit screening for the Quantum of Solace last night, which was followed by an afterparty at Tavern on the Green. Attendees included Daniel Craig, Becki Newton, Chris Diamantopoulos, Robert De Niro and Grace Hightower, Craig Hatkoff and Jane Rosenthal, Julia Stiles, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Jeffrey Wright, Debra Messing, Andre Balazs, Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict, Hoda Kotb, Jill Stuart, John Sykes, Judy McGrath, Howard Stringer, Rob Wiesenthal, Liya Kebede, Stewart Rahr, Molly Sims, and Serena Altschul. [PMc, Wireimage, GoaG]

♦ J. Crew is absolutely delighted Michelle Obama mentioned the brand on The Tonight Show last night. It's already the basis of an online ad campaign. [Jezebel, Politico]
♦ The Olsens celebrated the launch of their book at Barneys last night, after which MK celebrated into the night at Bungalow 8 and Lit. Today the duo signed books at Barnes & Noble, where they were greeted by PETA protesters in masks. [style file, OK!]
♦ Rachel Roy is just like you and me: She relishes going to vintage stores in small towns because "they aren't picked over by designers like New York is." As for whose style she most admires? Lauren Santo Domingo's. [FabSugar]
♦ You may have balked at Tom Ford's $9,240 otter fur boots, but you'll feel silly on the beach at St. Barts this winter without his $475 tanning goggles! [style file]

Terrible celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has been documenting the development of the innocent young New York Times Building, and tomorrow she is going to drape it in a sexy sheet and photograph it. So watch out! She's going to do this in a helicopter, flying well below standard FAA restrictions, and then she'll shoot some wolves. They had to write a letter to the neighbors apologizing in advance for having a famous controversial celebrity photographer hanging around in a helicopter all day while they're trying to work.

Donna Karan is celebrating her 60th birthday today, although you'd probably never guess it thanks to all the juice diets, yoga, Reiki and Kabbalah classes, and "therapeutic screaming" sessions. Others celebrating today: Photographer Annie Leibovitz is 59. Kelly Ripa is 38. Lorraine Bracco is turning 54. Sting is 57. And '80s pop star Tiffany is celebrating her 37th birthday.

• Lizzie Grubman is spawning once again: She and husband Chris Stern are expecting twins. [P6]

Annie Leibovitz, the 58-year-old photographer who cried "Art!" when she took those creepy, porn-y pictures of underage actress Miley Cyrus for Vanity Fair and that racist, King Kong-ish shot of Lebron James on the cover of Vogue, is also so ethereal that she doesn't even pay her bills. According to court documents, the shock-happy shutterbug has racked up debts to the tune of $715,000, even though she supposedly rakes in more than $2 million a year for her headline-grabbing work at Conde Nast.

Newsbreak: Spanish tennis champion Rafael Nadal regrets posing topless for New York Magazine. Look, I didn't actually know who Rafael Nadal was before he posed topless for New York Magazine except that he is an Olympic athlete and now he has broken the record for shortest length of time between the appearance of said photo on newsstands and the supposed expression of dismay that said photo would ever appear on newsstands. "He is fine with being a sex symbol," a "source" tells MSNBC gossip Courtney Hazlett. "but New York took it a bit further than he was comfortable with."* Oh Jesus Christ.Okay, so yesterday we reported how Nadal's nonsubtle Adonisy photoshoot was actually a calculated effort on the part of his corporate overlord Nike to make him more marketable as a pitchman of clothes that are not made of space-aged lightweight wick-friendly flubber or whatever people are supposed to be "working out" in these days.** But Nike has had a lot of problems this Olympics. Namely: it does not sponsor Michael Phelps, it does not sponsor Shawn Johnson, and it does not sponsor Nastia Liukin. You are going to have to trust me when I say this FREAKS THEM THE FUCK OUT. One former Nike executive we know even blames the $19 billion athletaspirationalism peddler's relevance insecurity for its inexplicable Orwellian internet manhunt of the anonymous troll who suggested it forced underperforming runner Liu Xiang to drop out of the games:

The Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" photo retouching controversy was left as an unresolved disagreement between truth-in-advertising purists and photo professionals who say retouching is a necessity. Television and movies may be moving in the opposite direction; a lighter touch with makeup is needed in the face of exacting HD cameras. But for print ads of all kinds, the wonders of Photoshop manipulation will prevail. James Danziger, the photo gallerist who represents celebrity image producer Annie Leibovitz, weighs in with a cogent postscript to the Dove controversy and its legacy: "We are living in both the digital age and the age of hypocrisy.":

The aftermath of last week's Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" photo retouching scandal remains unclear. It all started with retoucher Pascal Dangin telling the New Yorker that he had cleaned up photos for the campaign featuring ostensibly "Real" women, which would be a hugely hypocritical move. Dove, their ad agency, and celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz all denied it, saying they did nothing to the pictures except "to remove dust and do color correction." Today, Ad Age tries to decide whether or not the fiasco will hurt Dove—and the company is still stonewalling, while the New Yorker is standing by (most of) its story.

Beauty product purveyor Dove has finally responded to allegations, first reported in a New Yorker story, that the company retouched photos of the "Real" women in its "Campaign for Real Beauty" ads. Which would make them big hypocrites. But according to a statement from Dove this morning (via its PR agency, Edelman), the New Yorker was wrong. The company even got a quotable refutation from controversy-courting celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz! Their full denial is after the jump.

Hannah Montana, the kids' show starring exploited teenager (or, alternately, picture-posing strumpet) Miley Cyrus, ran its first new episode in two months last Sunday. And the ratings were down 24%! Could this be the end for our hero—done in by Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair, and a child-unfriendly wave of bad publicity?

This whole Miley Cyrus incident, a young pop star being immodestly scandalized by Vanity Fair photos: it's so complicated! How should you feel? Who should you blame? Who is the biggest jerk in this whole sordid incident? Where should America direct its momentary outrage so that it can return to playing video games, eating snack foods, and conducting imperial conquest? Allow us to help. After the jump, a roundup of all the reaction from our most important opinion leaders to the Biggest Media Celebrity Scandal Of The Final Quarter Of April 2008. Was Rosie O'Donnell right, that we all need to lay off the heroic and intimidating Annie Leibovitz? Or is Germaine Greer, a Guardian critic, correct in predicting the beginning of Miley's existential decline? It's quite the heated argument:

Today's absurd scandal about Miley Cyrus' topless photo shoot for Vanity Fair apparently broke too late to make it into Jon Stewart's Daily Show (as with the Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal last month), but Stephen Colbert's later broadcast of sibling satire show Colbert Report did manage to have some fun with the 15-year-old pop star's predicament. Colbert's jokey jabs at VF photographer Annie Leibovitz don't cut too deeply into the heart of the scandal, but the late-night comedian gets points for fast turnaround. Video after the jump.

Annie Leibovitz: come off it. Really now. As dirty as the media business is—and particularly the celebrity media business, which Vanity Fair revels in under a sheen of high class pretension—there are some bare, bottom-level standards to which we all must adhere. One of those is, "Do not sexually exploit minors." You want to economically exploit a minor? Fine. That's a grand American tradition. But trotting out 15 year-old Miley Cyrus with pouty lips, tousled hair, and only a bedsheet is just bad. Bad! Of course Vanity Fair bears the responsibility for publishing it. But the idea for the shoot can be traced to the tired celeb photographer Leibovitz (who is sorry it's been "misinterpreted"). And her narrow, robotically transgressive act has now played itself out. This incident, and Leibovitz's entire style, is less shocking than it is boring—but with a 15-year-old involved, it's boring and creepy.

I had thought this was a fuss about nothing. But when you look at the images side-by-side, it's pretty obvious that Vogue's latest cover featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen is indeed a sly homage by Annie Leibovitz to King Kong. In fact, the references by photographer Annie Leibowitz to one image in particular, identified earlier this week by a tipster to Jezebel, are unmistakeable. This First World War army recruitment poster-urging loyal Americans to destroy a "mad brute"-features a Kong-like gorilla with a right arm holding a weapon and a left gripping a virginal white beauty. It's much like the position basketball star LeBron assumes on the Vogue cover.