A nude Kim Kardashian photographed full-frontal by artist Barbara Kruger. Katherine Heigl as the epitome of the new American family posing with her adopted Korean daughter on her lap. And starlet Rooney Mara, pierced and tattooed, with blood on her hands, for her role as “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

Those are just a few of the arresting images that have graced the covers of W magazine since Stefano Tonchi took over as editor in chief with the September issue.

W has never shied away from provocative visuals. In fact, for many years that’s pretty much all the magazine had going for it. (Remember Steven Klein’s 2005 Brad and Angelina “Domestic Bliss” photo album, in which the stars played house in Palm Springs before they were officially a couple? Or Klein’s kinky 2005 fashion shoot featuring Tom Ford in a ménage-à-trois?)

But now Tonchi, the former editor of the New York Times' T magazine, is placing a premium on words too. He's filling his pages with surprising features about emerging celebrities such as Mara, a pair of London artists whose medium is food, and a teenage truffle importer from Fayetteville, Ark.

W, a Conde Nast publication, is “one of the most underdeveloped brands within the magazine world,” said Tonchi, when I caught up with him in L.A. over Golden Globes weekend. “I thought it could be a very strong general-interest publication for our generation [ages 30 to 50], in the way that Vanity Fair is for a different generation.”

To read more about the magazine's new direction, see my story here.

--Booth Moore

Photo: W magazine's February Movie Issue with Rooney Mara dressed as Lisbeth Salander from "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Credit: W magazine

 

Gossip, first impressions, trends in the making, celebrities and style setters

Rather than merely being paid to insert products into their shows, TV networks are moving into the clothing business themselves.

Bravo tested the waters last year, partnering with Kooba to introduce four exclusive handbags worn by the lead characters on the show "NYC Prep" and sold at the same time through Bravo.com. Now, networks are taking it a step further, getting involved on the front end in designing product to be incorporated into story lines and selling it at the same time it appears on-air.

Spanish-language network Telemundo has launched its own jewelry line, in hopes that viewers will want to buy baubles worn by their favorite telenovela heroines. Priced from $50 to $200, the line is sold only online now at Telemundojewelry.com but will be introduced in stores with a retail partner in the fall.

"We started doing product integration for our [advertising] clients, then we figured: Why not do it for ourselves?" said Susan Solano Vila, senior vice president of marketing for Telemundo. "If the story says there's a locket that a mother left to her daughter, we think about how to design one that looks contemporary and relevant."

Designed by Udi Behr, the Telemundo jewelry collection includes an exotic-looking turquoise cuff and gold bead necklace worn by the young heroine Jade in the series "El Clon," which focuses on star-crossed lovers and a clash of cultures, and the chunky pearl stretch bracelet and matching cocktail ring worn by the trophy wife Cecilia in "Donde Esta Elisa," which centers around the disappearance of her beautiful 17-year-old niece.

"We see Telemundo becoming a lifestyle brand," said Joni Camacho, marketing director for the NBC Universal TV Consumer Products Group. (NBC Universal owns Telemundo.) "We're going from jewelry to other personal accessories and home décor."

I logged a lot of miles Tuesday. Met with the Chanel public relations team and found out that their global creative director for makeup, Peter Philips, will be visiting L.A. next month. Can't wait to meet him and talk about all the hits he's had for the brand, especially the two nail shades Particuliere and Nouvelle Vague. Apparently, he works closely with Karl Lagerfeld in conceiving the beauty collections alongside his runway collections. With just two years in the post, I'd say he's been a grand success.
 
Chatted with the folks at Telemundo about the launch of a new Telemundo jewelry line which will be integrated into the story lines of the network's telenovelas. CBS is doing something similar with the show "90210," integrating a clothing line into the series and selling it concurrently at Bebe stores. Seems like the entertainment biz is finally catching on to the possibilities for fashion in the product integration game.
 
I met LeeAnn Sauter for lobster rolls in Santa Monica. She's an entrepreneur at the forefront of the growing trend of refashioning the hotel gift shop. (Note the Ace Hotel's partnership with Opening Ceremony in New York and the W Hotel's newly hired fashion director.) Sauter's company Seaside Luxe develops, builds and manages unique luxury boutiques in the world's most exclusive resorts, so her job takes her to places like Hawaii and Bermuda. Nice work if you can get it.
 
Finished the day catching up with Stephanie Solomon, fashion director for Bloomingdale's. She was in town for a walk-through of the new store planned for the renovated Santa Monica Place opening in August. She seems pretty excited about it.

I hope the mall brings some luster to the neighborhood. I took a few minutes to walk Fred Segal Santa Monica Tuesday and the stores there seem to have lost their way. Wasn't one thing on the floor that caught my eye.
 
--Booth Moore

Lace crowns, harem pants, monogrammed train cases, vintage turbans and painted fans. Despite mixed reviews, the costumes alone make "Sex and the City 2" worth seeing.

In the story, Carrie Bradshaw and her pals have moved on from thirtysomething single-girl angst to fortysomething married-girl angst (relationship malaise, career-family balance, hot nannies and hot flashes — depressing stuff). How to escape? An all expenses-paid trip to Abu Dhabi, and a fantasy wardrobe to go with it.

Unlike the costumes in the first film, this time, the look is more motivated by style than fashion. Not that there aren't a lot of big-name designers represented on-screen, including plenty of Halston (not surprising since Sarah Jessica Parker is chief creative officer for the Harvey Weinstein-owned fashion brand).

But there are also vintage finds, cheap chic basics from Zara and lots of discoveries from lesser-known designers, all of which made the series must-see fashion TV way back when. And this time, there's a book, "Sex and the City 2: The Stories. The Fashion. The Adventure" (Running Press), to document every head-turning look.

Costume designer Patricia Field and her team spent nearly a year doing fashion footwork — scouring markets in Dubai, sitting at runway shows, pulling from designer archives, visiting showrooms and working the late-night fashion party circuit, all in search of the perfect eye candy. The visual spectacle they create is its own kind of escape.

I spoke to Molly Rogers, Field's longtime collaborator and assistant costume designer on the film, about the process.

I could barely pay attention to what was happening on stage during “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” at the Geffen Playhouse the other night. The production, a staged reading of short stories, taps into women’s love-hate relationship with their clothes, using a paper dress, a bathrobe, a purse and other pieces to delve into the female experience.

At the Cannes Film Festival this year, everyone from Eva Longoria Parker to Eva Herzigova to Evangeline Lily was wearing Emilio Pucci. Peter Dundas, the new designer for the Florentine fashion house, has become the go-to guy for the red carpet set. And why not? He can make one dreamy dress, whether it's the ethereal teal-print gown Sarah Jessica Parker is wearing on the posters for " Sex and the City 2" or the dramatic, navy-and-black cutaway design Sienna Miller chose for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala last month.

One of the most striking moments in the new film "Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston" is a news clip of Dan Rather eulogizing the designer who died of AIDS-related cancer in 1990 as the creator of the pillbox hat.

While the Kennedy-era headwear was historic, it was only the tip of the iceberg for Roy Halston, the milliner from small-town Indiana who became America's first celebrity designer.

Although the film doesn't connect the dots completely, viewers will see that Halston was ahead of his time, paving the way for the shape of fashion to come. It's debatable whether we would be watching designers on "Project Runway" and "The Oprah Winfrey Show," or shopping for affordable versions of their clothes at Target and H&M if it weren't for Halston, a TV natural who once appeared on "The Love Boat."

While Halston certainly was fueled by the spectacular excesses of the 1970s, he was also eclipsed by them, and the genius of his simple Ultrasuede shirtwaist dresses, six-ply cashmere turtleneck sweaters and slinky jersey halter gowns is too often lost amid stories of coke binges at Studio 54.

He was the first American designer to try licensing on a large scale to the mass market, an exercise in fashion democracy that failed miserably then, but is the norm now. And he was an early victim of the corporate mergers and acquisitions that are business as usual in the apparel industry today, unable to adapt as his brand changed hands from Norton Simon Industries to Beatrice Foods, to Playtex, Revlon and more.

American women were defining themselves through fashion long before Lady Gaga doffed her bottoms to get to the top and Michelle Obama wore a J. Crew cardigan and pencil skirt to telegraph that she's just like us.

Gibson girls wore split skirts and went cycling to proclaim their independence. Suffragists dressed in tricolors to signify solidarity. Flappers shimmied in chemise dresses to express sexual freedom.

This liberated approach to dressing is the focus of a historical exhibition that opens Wednesday and runs through Aug. 15 at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" looks at perceptions of womanhood in mass media from the 1890s to the 1940s, focusing on archetypes of femininity created through dress.

Galleries are devoted to feminine archetypes — the heiress, the Gibson girl, the bohemian, the suffragist, the patriot, the flapper and the screen siren — with period clothing culled from permanent collections at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum bringing those archetypes to life.

Her idol is Coco Chanel. She has a taste for vintage fabrics. She has her sights set on the runways of Paris. And she's 10.

While other children were reading "Cinderella" and watching "Dora the Explorer," Cecilia Cassini was polishing her reading skills by flipping through Lucky and Vogue, and preparing a third-grade book report on "The Devil Wears Prada." And now, what started with a birthday gift of a sewing machine has blossomed into a fledgling fashion business with the help of manager Pilar DeMann, the woman who plotted the Kardashians' path from C-level obscurity to branding juggernaut.

Cecilia, a spunky fifth-grader from Encino, is selling her collection of one-of-a-kind girls' dresses at Lifesize at Fred Segal Santa Monica, where she will have a trunk show Saturday.

Her look is homespun but sassy, with simple dresses constructed from a skirt in one fabric and a bodice — strapless or tank-style — in another. The pieces are quirky cute with sequin, fabric rosette or bow details.

Billed as "the youngest fashion designer in the country," she has already been a guest at New York Fashion Week (trailed by a German TV crew), launched a slick e-commerce site and garnered corporate sponsors and interest from several TV producers.

Who needs a runway when a rack is better?

L.A. designers Katy Rodriguez, Gregory Parkinson, Emily Jerome and Jerome C. Rousseau hosted a cocktail party Monday night at the Palihouse Holloway in West Hollywood to preview their fall lines. A few garment racks in the courtyard, a little informal modeling and some vino were all it took to make this one of the most compelling events of Los Angeles' disjointed Fashion Week.

Of course, the clothes were pretty great too. No jeans and T-shirts here. These designers sell to the likes of Barneys New York Harvey Nichols and Ron Herman.

The group was coming off a trip to Paris Fashion Week earlier this month, where they showed their collections together in the "5 From California" showroom at an art gallery in the Marais, along with Jenni Kayne. The idea was that their combined experience and contacts (not to mention a collective air of L.A. cool) would get them more bang for the buck than if they rented spaces on their own at trade shows or in hotel suites.

Gossip, first impressions, trends in the making, celebrities and style setters.

This is shaping up to be the season when the runway comes to you.

Hundreds of designers will present their fall collections during the monthlong runway circuit that kicked off Wednesday in New York and ends in mid-March in Paris with a stop in Milan along the way. And although the runway shows used to be exclusive events -- closed to all but select editors, store buyers and stylists  -- fashion houses increasingly are extending the reach of their blockbuster productions by using the Internet.

For several seasons now, fashion show attendees have been taking their own amateur video and photos and posting them online using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. So it was only a matter of time before designers got on the bandwagon. Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana are among those who have experimented with bringing their runway shows to the digital space.

Alexander McQueen, the fashion world's reigning provocateur, was found dead Thursday morning at his home in London. He was 40. The police have not released an official report on the cause of death, but his press representatives at KCD Worldwide said it appeared to be suicide.

As a designer, he was not only a technical genius -- as comfortable tailoring an Edwardian-inspired suit as draping a kimono with a 25-foot train -- but a creative genius too. His theatrical runway productions were frequently controversial, casting models as witches and mental patients.

"A gifted iconoclast, who could just as easily be creating art as fashion" was how Mimi Avins, then the Los Angeles Times' fashion editor, described McQueen upon seeing his clothes for the first time in 1996.