Lorenzo Martone and his business partner Ryan Brown are shutting down their model management agency ARC New York at the end of this year. Reportedly, they are still sorting out who will keep A-list clients like Alessandra Ambrosio, Irina Shayk, and Julie Henderson. [Page Six]Swarovski has unveiled a new scholarship program for two Central Saint [...]

Each July, fashion—the made-in-Italy kind, at least—moves south to Rome. The destination? Altaroma fashion week, Italy’s answer to haute couture, where acting President Silvia Venturini Fendi and Vogue Italia’s Franca Sozzani pick the womenswear winners of Italy’s annual Who is On Next young designer competition. (The men’s half of Who’s Next was held last month [...]

New York-based designer Jen Kao was selected by Vogue Italia’s Franca Sozzani and the buyers at TheCorner.com for the Vogue Talents Corner installation in Milan. While in Italy, Kao took full advantage of the situation to do a little traveling and more than a little shopping. She shares some of her snaps and memories, below.“We [...]

The reign of Patti Smith rages on. The eternally cool rocker-poet is up for the National Book Award tomorrow night—Just Kids, her memoir of her early years with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, is a finalist for the nonfiction category—and she’s the inspiration for yet another editorial in the new issue of VMan, on stands November 11. [...]

Gareth Pugh (left) has just opened his first store in Hong Kong, for which he shipped in tubs and tubs of black rubber paint from England. “What could be more me than a black box?” he asked of his design strategy. A black box full of nails, we’d say, though that might not be the [...]

The huge machinery that is the Italian luxury fashion and textile industry is facing a threat on three fronts: its own complacency in not developing homegrown talent, the migration of manufacturing to low-cost countries, and now the economic downturn. In a way, though, though, the horrible realization that there’s a perfect storm brewing might be [...]

10 a.m.
I went to see Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi [co-designers for Gianfranco Ferré and Aquilano.Rimondi] at their showroom. We had a long talk about how to move forward now that they have become such credible, respected, and established names in the industry.
1 p.m.
I took a quick break for myself and, at the same time, [...]

Talk about a tough room. When Giambattista Valli presented his pre-fall 2009 collection at Pitti Immagine in Florence last night, his clothes competed for attention with Michelangelo. Seriously. The Valli catwalk ran through the Palazzo Vecchio’s storied Salone dei Cinquecento, where Michelangelo’s sculpture The Genius of Victory is housed and where Giorgio Vasari’s frescoes trumpet [...]

Friday morning attracted an impressive assortment of fashion identities at the Raleigh hotel in Miami as Vogue Italia’s Franca Sozzani hosted a breakfast to unveil—wait for it—a duck. Not just any duck, however. This one, a giant resin sculpture (pictured at left) measuring in around one meter, is British contemporary artist Stuart Semple’s ode to [...]