Juliette Longuet

Gap, like other retailers, has looked to high-profile designers to help it lure shoppers into its stores, especially as the economic downturn has depressed consumer spending.

Signing McCartney is a genius move for the chain, which has been unable to lure shoppers into stores since before the downturn. On the heels of their winning spring collaboration with Alexander Wang and Vena Cava, now it’s the turn of Stella McCartney.

McCartney, 37, the daughter of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and was the creative director of French fashion house Chloé before launching her fashion label under her own name in 2001.

This isn’t the first time the designer has teamed up with the High Street.

Counting celebrity friends Liv Tyler, Madonna, Kate Moss and Gwyneth Paltrow among fans of her signature sharp tailoring, sequinned evening dresses and slouchy blazers, one can expect the girls and boys clad in her designs for Gap will be looking very chic indeed.

She said she had long wanted to create a children’s collection, and could offer the line at an affordable price in partnership with Gap.

The collection will be carried by select GapKids and babyGap stores in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Ireland, and Japan.

U.S. consumers also will be able to order items from the collection online.

Hollywood has the Oscars. The fashion industry has this year the Costume Institute Gala.The opening night celebration will be Monday, May 4, 2009, and the event is arguably the biggest fashion night of the year. Marc Jacobs will serve as this year’s Honorary Chair, and co-chairs include Kate Moss, Justin Timberlake, and Anna Wintour. Attendees will have the opportunity to preview the exhibit’s 70 masterworks of haute couture and ready-to-wear along with the editorial, advertising, and runway photography of those individuals who captured the essence of a fashion era. Everyone took fashion risks. Some worked, some didn’t!

Has announced, the spring 2009 exhibition will be The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion. The exhibition will examine the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty and will focus on iconic fashion models of the 20th century and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras.

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It is unbelievable but every single pair of the shoes below are made entirely out of some sort of rubber or plastic!!!  Plastic shoes, sometimes called jellies, started a comeback last year with Marc Jacobs’s reissue of his beloved mouse flat in jelly-bean hues of PVC. This year this trend covered much in the mainstream media yet, but when old, well-established houses like Tods, Givenchy and Gucci dabble in moulded PVC for their Spring collections and so do designers prone to the avant-garde like Marc Jacobs and Vivienne Westwood and contemporary brands like , Melissa and See by Chloe… well, it could call that a full blown trend. The best part is that most of these styles are totally affordable not one shoe is over $200! But for their glossy charm and vibrant color, this pair from Kartell (yes, the furniture company) is this season’s best. In a bold move outside its category, Kartell got Italian designer Norma Luisa to create a small group of jellies called Glue Cinderella ($135 at Kartell <http://nymag.com/listings/stores/kartell/> , 39 Greene St., nr. Grand St.; 212-966-6665), which come in seven solids, three two-tone colorways, and clear. There are tiny vent holes in the arch, and the heel is star-shaped, so your footprint will be unmistakable.

Who hasn’t heard of the Matthew Williamson line for H&M? The clothes were off the racks within hours on the April 23rd launch. In case you missed the first wave, the next shipment launches on May 14th, with the designer second collection complete with bathing suits and more accessories and including his debut men’s line inspired by Williamson’s personal style.. On April 28, the designer and his friends and fans got crazy aboard a yacht docked at the South Street Seaport to make the presentation of his summer collection. This event took place at The Majesty by the South Street Seaport with a private concert of Grace Jones for 20 min!! He had a nice mix of celebrities such as Olivia Palermo, Katie Lee Joel, and certain Gossip Girls!

Restless after having sold off the majority of her Calypso chain last year, Christiane Celle is back with a vengeance, or rather photographs and books. Her Clic Gallery on Lafayette (and another on St. Barths), will get a few siblings this spring when she opens two more around the corner from each other. Pictured above is the coming soon storefront for the Clic at 424 Broome Street between Crosby and Lafayette, due to open in April in tandem with a 2,000 square-foot twin at 255 Centre Street and Broome. The three shops are situated in an area relatively overlooked by retail. This photography-focused chain of bookstores and galleries will display rotating monthly photography exhibits, ranging from New York street style to conceptual posed portraits. Celle (who is married to commercial photographer Antoine Verglas) sought to open an affordable gallery where shoppers could browse and buy photography without the intimidating atmosphere of other high-end art purveyors in the neighborhood. She personally chooses artists to showcase and sells signed, limited edition prints starting at $750. The minimalist storefront models blond-wood floors, high ceilings, and sprawling white walls, with a varying assortment of furniture that corresponds with the theme of each exhibit.There is even an East Hampton shop debuting in spring as well. A great new adventure for Christiane and for us!

Barbie’s never-ending 50th-birthday celebration continued in Malibu this week where Mattel spent an estimated $500,000 on a party in a real-life dream house.Heidi Klum was there. “I also want to congratulate Barbie on how fabulous she looks at 50,” she told, which adds that Klum “remained tight-lipped about her upcoming clothing venture, a possible tie-in with the iconic doll.” A Barbie clothing line would explain her presence at the party.

Sojin Lee, formerly of Net-a-porter.com, and Simon Fuller, the British music impresario and investor behind Roland Mouret and David and Victoria Beckham’s women’s collections, are ready to spin the concept of fashion-as-entertainment into an online business. Later this year, the duo will launch Fashionair, a Web site that aims to offer an insider’s view of the industry’s personalities, latest news, styling secrets and hottest closets. The new site, which is like a fashion magazine come to life on screen, will not sell any merchandise. Instead, it will promote styles, trends and brands — and hopes to drive user traffic to more than 500 e-tailers worldwide. “The storytelling opportunities in fashion are immense and endless, as are the opportunities to engage with customers, create an emotional connection with them, and court them with a content-led site,” said Lee. “What we’re doing is creating a brand, and the Web site is just the beginning,” said Lee, who believes Fashionair is the first of its kind. “It’s a TV-like experience, but it’s not fashion TV. And it doesn’t have the traditional layout of a fashion Web site”. The site will feature a weekly, live news and pop culture show with content ranging from top industry stories to concert reviews to the latest bestsellers at Topshop; one-on-one interviews with industry figures such as makeup artist Val Garland; Sophia Neophitou, editor of 10 Magazine, and photographer Ellen von Unwerth, and segments where designers and celebrities such as Anna Sui and Thakoon Panichgul open their homes and closets.

The jewelry designer opened his first store last month on Perry Street in New York’s West Village. Known for his edgy jewelry and equally edgy views on the industry, Binns said he opened the shop to properly represent himself without having to rely on other methods, such as editorial coverage or wholesale partners. Binns, a native of Belfast, Ireland said “Having your own storefront is a window to your world.’ Binns described the nearly 300-square-foot store as clean and minimal, so as to present jewelry collections he described as “full-on.The boutique exhibits over 30 collections of Binns’ jewelry, including one-off and couture pieces. Styles retail from $180 to $25,000. Binns is also including designs dating back 10 or 15 years, as well as collections that neither Henri Bendel nor Jeffrey. Other retail outlets that carry his collections include Net-a-porter.com and Shopbop.com.With its accessible prices and fashion-driven design, retailers appreciate Binns’ cutting-edge take on classic styles and say consumers today are buying into his big, fun fashion. He also appeals to a broad range of customers, from Amy Winehouse to Michelle Obama. Binns currently lives and works in Venice Beach, Calif., having left New York after 9/11. The designer is looking forward to reconnecting with the city that helped launch his career and would potentially open other stores, perhaps in Berlin or Tokyo. Tom is irreverent, fashion-driven and loves colors.

He approaches design in the way we approach our store experience insofar as always looking to surprise and excite the customer. He is always looking to give the unexpected, and he does so without even trying.

Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute Explores Role of Fashion Models as Muses of Recent Eras. Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, the spring 2009 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will explore the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty, focusing on iconic fashion models in the latter half of the 20th century and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras. The exhibition will be on view at the Metropolitan from May 6 through August 9, 2009. The exhibition is made possible by Marc Jacobs. To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum’s Costume Institute Gala Benefit will take place on Monday, May 4, 2009. Marc Jacobs will serve as Honorary Chair of the Gala. Co-Chairs are Kate Moss; Justin Timberlake; and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. The exhibition will feature approximately 70 masterworks of haute couture and ready-to-wear. Fashion editorial, advertising, and runway photography plus video footage of models, actresses, socialites, and rock stars who epitomize their epochs, will be used throughout the galleries to explicate the fashion zeitgeist.

- Gala Benefit May 4, 2009, with Honorary Chair Marc Jacobs and Co-Chairs Kate Moss, Justin Timberlake, and Anna Wintour
- Exhibition dates: May 6–August 9, 2009
- Exhibition location: The Tisch Galleries, second floor
- Press preview: Monday, May 4, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.

Flamboyant owner Sir Philip Green isn’t about to change his strategy for Topshop’s U.S. debut. This peek inside Topshop Soho was telling: the store looked nowhere near complete. How, we wondered, would they be ready to open by November? Turns out, they won’t be. Sir Philip Green and Co. has moved the store’s opening date yet again…to March 2009. ‘This has been a logistical nightmare,’ Green said. The time it takes to get permits from the city is cited as one of the reasons for the massive delay; the building, at 478-486 Broadway, is landmarked. And though  anyone could have predicted that the ambitious, 40,000-square-foot store would face some major hurdles, who thought they’d so wrongly guess how long it’d take to complete? March means missing those crucial holiday dollars; may we humbly suggest a Soho pop-up to tide the eager shopping crowds over?