♦ One of the recession's teeny silver linings: In an unprecedented move, luxury brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton are cutting prices for US customers. [WSJ]
♦ Supermodels—they're just like us! Helena Christensen braved the crowds in London yesterday to grab a polka-dot Comme des Garçons cardigan from H&M, and proudly wore it out that night. [Grazia]
♦ Does Agyness Deyn care about the fate of fluffy animals or not? On Wednesday, she DJed at the Humane Society's Cool vs. Cruel ceremony with boyfriend Albert Hammond Jr. But she's apparently not averse to wearing fur on the runway or to non-animal rights events. [Fashionologie]

Last week Tina Brown's new blog fest The Daily Beast ran a post featuring sketches by past Project Runway contestants as ideas for First Lady Elect Michelle Obama's inauguration gown. Then, oops!, The Smoking Gun figured out that the supposed entry by season one winner Jay McCarroll was actually a "hoax," perpetrated by a Canadian musician named Jay McCarrol (one L!) The author of the piece—who worked on it while at the now-shuttered Radar—had contacted him instead of the real designer by mistake and he just decided to run with it. So he sent the author the sketch, and the whole article ended up getting published on the Beast. Tina and Co. took the sketch down after the Smoking Gun reveal, and now the real McCarroll has weighed in on the whole kerfuffle: He tells the New York Observer:

It's been a month since Tina Brown launched her Barry Diller-backed website, The Daily Beast. But it appears the massive budget for the new launch—reportedly $18 million over three years—didn't create room for a fact-checker on staff. The Smoking Gun reports that Brown's site was fooled by a Canadian college student who posed as Jay McCarroll, the winner of the first season of Project Runway, when he submitted a design for a burlap dress for Michelle Obama to wear to the Inaugural Ball.

Jay McCarroll wants everyone to know that, contrary what it says in that Jennifer Senior article that positioned him as the poster boy for post-reality show nonfame, he is not homeless. So he made this video of himself acting all homeless. [Radar]

In New York mag, Jennifer Senior takes a long, long, hard look at "the competition reality genre"—basically, all shows where contestants actually have to have skills besides willing to publicly humiliate themselves—and finds it lacking, especially w/r/t the career of inaugural Project Runway winner Jay McCarroll. Jay has been homeless and living in his studio for two years, cultivating his collection and, apparently, honing his already impressive nasty whiny streak. Why is this? Jennifer asks, along with 40 or 50 other rhetorical questions. Including! "If [Jay] couldn't succeed in the aftermath, why were we watching? Of what use was the show?" Um. To entertain us? By being a T.V. show?

The Near-Fame Experience Of Being A Bravo Reality Star [NYM]

Remember how Jay McCarroll turned down the Project Runway money because it would infringe on his creative process? Or something like that. We may not be fashion editors, but we're thinking he probably should have taken that money, because designing ponchos with the McDonald's logo on them doesn't seem like a step in the right direction. But maybe that's just us. And we'd make a joke about Kelis and her milkshake, but the whole thing just made us too sad.