♦ Anna Wintour attended the presidential debate last night at Hofstra. In Hempstead. On Long Island. Also: Is it just us, or is her hair getting lighter and lighter? [The Cut]
♦ Next week, five hundred lucky students will attend Teen Vogue's Fashion University, where for three days they'll access the wisdom of Tory Burch, Phillip Lim, Peter Som, Nanette Lepore, Monica Botkier and Cynthia Rowley. [NYDN]
♦ No, the day could not pass without Marc Jacobs being in the news for some reason: He's inked a licensing deal for swimwear, which will launch in spring '09. [WWD]

♦ Diane von Furstenberg's comic book is now on sale. She launched it last night with a party at her meatpacking district boutique, where guests (like Lindsay Price, left) had their names checked off at the door by Whitney Port and Olivia Palermo, and everyone was warned they might be taped. We look forward to seeing the relevant scene on The City. [Racked]
♦ Pat Field's line for British chain Marks and Spencer had shoppers lining up in their hundreds today, but an unimpressed reporter says she "can't imagine any woman with a stylish bone in her body being seen dead in these get-ups." [Daily Mail]

♦ Are Madonna and Guy Ritchie really divorcing? It might be another rumor or really a Sun exclusive, but the British tabloid says they plan to announce the split as soon as today. [The Sun]
♦ Christie Brinkley is suing Peter Cook for violating the couple's confidentiality agreement by talking about their relationship on 20/20. [NYP]
♦ The "mystery illness" that's caused Janet Jackson to cancel tour dates is supposedly a vestibular migraine, which "induces the sensation of vertigo." The good news is that now she's apparently cured. [ET]
♦ Raffaello Follieri's lawyers yesterday asked a judge to "go easy" on Raffaello in exchange for his quick return to Italy where he'll "never be heard from again." Ha! [NYDN]
♦ The 40-year-old CEO of a company called Future Tech Enterprise on Long Island is actually paying $20,000 to box Michael Lohan. And Stephen Baldwin is now planning to serve as the match judge. [Newsday via NYO]

• Anderson Cooper's great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, held as a slave cousin now owns the plantation where Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson once worked. Cooper's cousin has invited Obama to visit her ancestor's grave. (CORRECTION: CNN said Obama's ancestor did not work for Vanderbilt. [R&M]

♦ Is Lauren Bush supporting Barack Obama? Maybe. The niece of the president praised the Democratic nominee in a recent interview and she decided against using her family name for her new clothing line, Lauren Pierce, taking her grandmother's maiden name instead. [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are either engaged or splitting up, depending on what you read. [Daily Mail, MSN]
♦ Marc Jacobs is supposedly jealous that his ex, Jason Preston, is dating someone else, even though he has a new boyfriend of his own, too. [P6]
♦ He can't afford a plane, but Diddy did get to upgrade to a new Rolls-Royce last week. [P6]
♦ In a new memoir, Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch) says she used to trade sex for coke. [NYDN]

Albert Hammond Jr. and Agyness Deyn walking their dog in the East Village ... Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber riding around on a Vespa in SoHo and later walking with their son to a bookstore ... Jon Stewart and his wife pushing their kids in strollers ... Julianne Moore getting a parking ticket in the West Village ... Taylor Momsen and Leighton Meester filming Gossip Girl on the Upper East Side ... Sarah Jessica Parker walking son James to school ... Emma Watson walking with an unidentified guy ... Kate Winslet running to keep up with her son ... Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone holding hands on a walk in the West Village ...

Marc Jacobs standing on the sidewalk outside the Mercer Hotel ... David Duchovny jogging across the street ... Molly Shannon and Nigella Lawson outside ABC studios ... Naomi Watts walking in the West Village with bag from the Container Store ... Salma Hayek and daughter Valentina arriving at their hotel ... Penn Badgley shooting a scene on the Gossip Girl set in Brooklyn ... Katie Holmes carrying Suri out of their East 13th Street apartment building ... Ethan Hawke crossing the street ... Paula Deen and her husband Michael arriving at their hotel ... Beck outside the Letterman show ... Madonna and Alex Rodriguez leaving Yom Kippur services at the Kabbalah Center ... Sarah McLachlan leaving her hotel in Midtown ... and Daniel Radcliffe talking to fans outside the Broadhurst Theater.

♦ Diane von Furstenberg has not only designed a collection inspired by Wonder Woman, she's also authored a comic book featuring superheroines Diva, Viva and Fifa. [WWD, DVF]
♦ Backstage at Marc Jacobs' Louis Vuitton Paris show, the models flipped up their skirts to show Cathy Horyn an important detail: lace underwear monogrammed with LV. [On the Runway]
♦ Jessica Stam's East Village apartment, designed by Rafael de Cardenas, is sickeningly fabulous for a 22-year-old. [Jezebel]

♦ Kate Betts sits down with Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld for an interview, which was also filmed if you can cope with seeing Karl's ponytail up close. [Time]
♦ Suzy Menkes celebrates 20 years at the IHT, and fashion stars including Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Alber Elbaz, Anna Wintour, and John Galliano offer their video tributes. [The Moment]
♦ Sofia Coppola is designing a line of handbags and shoes for Louis Vuitton. The company must have searched far and wide to find this unknown talent so deserving of a break. [WWD]

♦ The first painting of Kate Moss ever to be sold at auction—"a self-portrait in lipstick marked with her own lip prints and stains of her former boyfriend Pete Doherty's blood"—is expected to go for between £30,000 and £40,000 in London on Saturday. Meanwhile the subject of an upcoming show at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris will be "the Kate Moss myth" in advertising. [Telegraph, WWD]
♦ Video of the new Prada collection (and models falling on the runway) from the show in Milan earlier this evening. [NYT]

♦ Model Coco Rocha has been filming a series for Style.com called the "Insider's Guide to Backstage." Her invaluable tips include how to steal shoes from runway shows and how to dodge cameras. [Fashionologie]
♦ Could Marc Jacobs be opening a store in the East Village? That's the rumor. [Fashionista]
♦ Norwegian designer Peter Dundas is taking over from Matthew Williamson as the artistic director for Pucci. [WWD]
♦ Vivienne Westwood's show was the event of London Fashion Week, with Dita Von Teese, Pamela Anderson, Emma Watson, Kate Moss, Mischa Barton, and Tilda Swinton front row. [Daily Mail]
♦ By the end of the night, however, Moss was snapped looking completely wrecked as she emerged from a nightclub with Allegra Versace, who isn't keeping the best company for a recovering anorexic. [Mirror]

He's back! Porn star fashionisto Erik Rhodes, former sexual liaison of skirt-wearing fashion designer Marc Jacobs, was spotted at a gay bar up in Washington Heights. He looked good, our tipster says, until you realized who he was and not just "some random papi." Stalker report after the jump.

» The Liv Tyler-hosted party for Hearts on Fire diamonds at the Rose Bar was the hottest ticket in one of the busiest social weeks of the year: Leonardo DiCaprio, Alexandra & Theodora Richards (who DJed), Keith Richards, Elizabeth Banks, Catherine Keener, Mena Suvari, Dave Navarro, Ellen von Unwerth, Tara Subkoff, Alan Cumming, Tinsley Mortimer, Adrian Grenier, Sean Avery, Emma Roberts, Monet Mazur, Richie Rich, Ingrid Sischy, Jamie Burke, Russell Simmons, Lauren Santo Domingo, Diego Garcia, Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict all stopped by. [The Daily/Paper]

[Fashion designer Marc Jacobs with his current boyfriend Lorenzo Martone at Pastis, a New York celebrity cliche, yesterday. They were also photographed kissssing after this was taken; image via Bauer-Griffin] Private Hangnail's new line beats the original, Fashun Geighs Has Sad, Sooprize Respektivly

Marc Jacobs and boyfriend Lorenzo Martone kissing while eating outside at Pastis ... Liv Tyler walking in the Village with her son ... Andre Leon Talley walking with Venus Williams while wearing peep toe shoes ... Keira Knightley taking a stroll with a friend ... Diane von Furstenberg chatting with a group of women at a Fashion Week event ... Claire Danes and Jada Pinkett Smith posing for pics in the front row at Zac Posen's show ... Tobey Maguire being followed by paparazzi while jogging on the street uptown ... Natalie Portman walking under an umbrella on her way to the Rodarte show ... Heidi Klum en route to Bryant Park ... Tyra Banks standing outside and surrounded by fans ... Blake Lively striking a pose in Bryant Park ... Agyness Deyn looking like she's about to trip while making her way into the Kors show ... Goldie Hawn exiting a store ... Jessica Simpson leaving her uptown hotel en route to the Letterman show ... Eva Mendes going somewhere in a hurry ... Ricky Gervais standing on a street corner and talking to a woman ... and Lindsay Lohan leaving a party, followed closely behind by Samantha Ronson.

No really, I checked with Jezebel editor Anna Holmes, seriously no one cares this year. I even checked with the anonymous comments left on New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn's blog; this is like the most irrelevant-feeling Fashion Week since the terrorists got involved. Why? Well I thought of five good reasons! This guy (pictured) is your first clue…Marc Jacobs is the only designer anyone cares about and, even though his collection was sort of cool this year, his collection has always been sort of a loss-leader funded by his insane diva behavior and that behavior mostly stopped this year. Last September Marc Jacobs started his 9 p.m. show two and a half hours late and everyone had a hissy fit about it, which in turn caused Marc Jacobs to have a hissy fit over how he was an "artist" and people should not be thinking about quotidian details such as whether their dogs had been fed. Then he dyed his hair blue, went insane and maybe also to rehab. Anyway, that is as good as it gets, in fashion. (That should tell you something.) But he is sane this year. It's all about the clothes, and no one really cares about clothes! Everyone who isn't Russian is poor. Times Thursday Styles regular Stephanie Rosenbloom has a story about the nation's thrift stores. This is hugely significant for two reasons: 1. It is actually a story, and last year around this time Stephanie Rosenbloom was writing about horseback riding in the Hampton's, but it turns out she has been hiding out in the Business section lately, getting down to proverbial business. 2. The story is that the demand for other people's cast-off ill-advised purchases has exceeded the nation's supply of ill-advised purchases. Cindy McCain is the new Victoria Beckham. Example: last week Us Weekly decreed Michelle Obama to have hands-down better style than Cindy McCain. This week the selfsame magazine has a whole feature on Cindy's supposed "makeover" and how pretty she suddenly supposedly looks! And that is not even to mention the matter of Sarah Palin's disappearing-reappearing beehive, and Michelle Obama's Thakoon dress and the cool shirt pictured above, which we found on Philebrity. Political fashion icons are the new celebrity fashion icons, and that is bad for the industry because unlike worthless celebrities who are allowed to change outfits as fast as they can spill tequila and Sparks on the ones they were wearing, politicians, at least when they are not wearing $300,000 dresses, have to pretend they understand the realities of working-class Americans busy raiding thrift stores/insurgent safe houses. The must-have item this year is the jumpsuit. Perhaps you heard about the school in Texas that recently decreed that all kids who chose to violate dress code requirements by rolling up their skirts or whatever would risk being forced to don prison jumpsuits for the remainder of the school day. Now, there is always going to be that one group of totally cool high schoolers who make the prison jumpsuits into some sort of "subversive" fashion statement, but bottom line is that high schoolers would not be incurring dress code violations if they did not want to show off their skinny high schooler legs etc. etc. and those high schoolers grow into the adults who consume fashion. So this gives me pause:

Naomi Watts doing some pre-baby shopping with a friend in Union Square ... Sarah Jessica Parker taking a walk downtown ... Petra Nemcova walking into the Diesel show ... Rosario Dawson crossing the street outside Balthazar ... Julia Stiles shopping in the West Village ... Bette Midler hugging her daughter outside the Bryant Park tents ... Betsey Johnson walking through the rain in Midtown ... Jessica Alba carrying her baby ... Mary-Kate Olsen sitting front row at the Proenza Schouler show ... Adrian Grenier having lunch outside with friends ... Jessica Simpson getting out of a taxi with pal Ken Paves ... Kanye West and Jay-Z making their way into the Marc Jacobs show ... Natalie Portman showing up to the front row at the Derek Lam show ... Martha Stewart leaving Bryant Park after attending Marc Jacobs' show ... and Marc Jacobs and Victoria Beckham leaving the Waverly Inn.

[Fashion designer Marc Jacobs leaving the Waverly Inn with famous celebrity Victoria Beckham last night; image via INF] miasma-protege's new line beats the original, The Sashay Parade Emerges From Its Cave And Begins Anew.

♦ At Marc Jacobs, there were lots of celebs like Helena Christensen, Elijah Wood, Nicole Richie, Stephanie Seymour, Kelly Osbourne, Sofia Coppola, Winona Ryder, and Jennifer Lopez, and the elaborate, adventurous, world travel-inspired clothes got high marks—but all of the above was entirely eclipsed by the presence of Posh Spice's new gamine haircut. [WWD, Telegraph, Hello]

• New Yorker editor Sarah Morrison spills about the style issue out today, and about what makes Ariel Levy's profile of Marc Jacobs so intriguing. [The Daily]