When Andrew Butler's first-grade teacher decided against the Grimms come story time and read Greek myths aloud instead, she had no clue that her choice would still be reverberating, almost 25 years later, through sound systems at clubs all over the world. But reverberate it does: Butler is now the presiding spirit behind Hercules and Love Affair, the New York-based band whose self-titled debut is destined to soundtrack the summer of 2008. Released to steady acclaim in Europe and the U.K. earlier this year and due out stateside on June 28, "Hercules and Love Affair" is a myth-inspired song cycle set to a disco beat—with the caveat that Butler works both lyrics and music to his own inventively romantic ends. The album's pedigree has already made it one of the year's spotlight releases—DFA Records impresario Tim Goldsworthy co-produced, and Antony of Antony and the Johnsons chips in vocals—but it's the passion lurking inside Butler's synthesized, sequenced songs that's making both critics and clubgoers swoon. On Saturday, the Hercules crew take over Studio B in Brooklyn for an Opening Ceremony-hosted show previewing the record; here, Butler talks to Style.com about his ongoing love affair with the dance floor.

This is the absolute lamest question to ask someone in a band, but I'll go for it: Where did you get the name Hercules and Love Affair?

Actually, the name is pretty central to the record; I took a lot of the imagery in the songs from Greek mythology, which has been an obsession of mine ever since my first-grade teacher started reading them out loud to us in school. But more specifically, the name comes from one of my favorite myths—it's a story about Hercules and a lover he had, a male lover he lost on a journey. There's a really intense description of Hercules as he's looking for this lost lover, and I so connected to that idea, the strongest man in the world at his most utterly vulnerable. That, and "Hercules and Love Affair, " sounds pretty disco.

Were you always a disco fan?

I've always been into club music, which came out of disco. But the more important influences are probably bands like Yazoo and Cocteau Twins. The music is electronic, but it's emotional, too; you relate to it on a personal level. My friendship with Antony is founded on a shared love of those bands. Before we ever recorded together, we'd just hang out listening to Cocteau Twins.

And the whole time, you were secretly plotting a collaboration?

I loved his record, and he knew I was a songwriter, too, but it wasn't until I wrote "Blind" that those pieces fell into place. I thought it would be interesting to hear his voice in a more synthesized context, so I brought it to him, and it worked. And then we kept at it.

You have a few different vocalists on the record—Antony sings, you sing; there's Kim Ann and there's NomI… Why so many singers?

Well, some of that's just happenstance. Kim and I were friends, and sometimes she'd be at my place when I was working on a song and needed to hear a voice on it. Nomi we approached more formally, at Antony's recommendation; she's usually more of a hip-hop girl, but I love how she sounds. Beyond the vocals, a lot of people got on board for the record—we recorded a whole horn section, for example, and drums and bass and rhythm guitar, a whole live band. They're all coming on tour with us, it's going to be a real show. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm a big believe in collaboration and getting as many good people involved as possible. Like, the DFA guys are going to deejay at Studio B on Saturday, and Opening Ceremony is hosting the show, and promoting it at their store… I like to use my community. That doesn't happen enough in New York these days. Maybe we can bring it back into style.

As Beijing prepares to welcome the world to the 2008 Olympics, Nike has been busy preparing the kit for the athletes vying for glory. Monday's extravagant unveiling of the Chinese Federation's Olympic uniforms in the Forbidden City represented a successful merging of the old and new, with cutting-edge technology and innovation blending with the imagery and heritage of one of the world's most ancient civilizations. All of which ties in rather nicely with Nike's latest line of products: the new Nike Sportswear range (a moniker that pays homage to the original 1979 line). The new line seeks to reinvent the classic products that have defined the brand over the years by using innovative new technologies, as well as drawing on elements of inspiration from the forthcoming Beijing games. Style.com sat down with Nike Sportswear's creative director, Richard Clarke, to get the lowdown.

You're starting off with eight products…

Well, it's a lot more that eight. What we really wanted to do was highlight the eight icons, which are the benchmarks of innovation in our company. Nike Air Max, for example, was one of the first shoes that used air cushioning. So we're starting off with the benchmarks of innovation, but they are many more products that have been remastered.

And eight's a fairly good way to start, given that it's such an auspicious number in this country. Is there more Chinese inspiration in the line?

The main inspiration, on a grander level, is the innovation behind Nike. It's what we are as a company, and it's what's driven us for over 36 years, the fact that we're pioneering new products in terms of sports. So we can take a heritage style, a new style, and blend it into one. Air Max is a design exercise, but it's also a functional exercise, as to how we can improve on that design. So we're commenting on a continuum, rather than being inspired by one single thing.

More specifically in terms of what we're looking at in front of us now, though, there is a distinct homage paid to China here. The Air Force 1 with the "Bird's Nest" stadium detailing, for example.

From a seasonal perspective, obviously the Olympics is of enormous significance, whether that comes from the Bird's Nest, or the number 8, with the octagon detailing. The Olympic Stadium and the Aquatic Center, from a design perspective, are extremely inspiring. But what's also inspiring is what's happening here, with the juxtaposition of new and old, and also the hybrid between these two different areas. You have new buildings and structures alongside old buildings, and this blended form creates a hybrid.

What's your favorite product?

The Flywire Windrunner is really amazing, mainly because of knowing how it's made, and the fact that it weighs only 116 g (four ounces). We've taken the Flywire innovation in footwear and played around with structures. The octadot dunk is also really cool and inspiring, and it demonstrates innovation from the optical point of view, with the octadots blurring to represent speed. The products aim to balance both the emotional and physical ways we can enhance an athlete's performance.

With all the emphasis on performance, do you worry about compromising the aesthetic?

We've got the benefit of providing both of these: performance and aesthetics, the same way we're able to combine a heritage line and a new line. We're focused on the athletes, and this exhibition is a reminder of that. You shouldn't have to give up your personal sense of style to perform as an athlete. This body of work represents how we allow individuals and athletes to perform using their own self-expression through innovation and design.

On the eve of his Chanel Cruise (as he prefers to refer to it) collection in Miami, Karl Lagerfeld sat down with Style.com between fittings to talk about his reading list, decorating projects—and the Anna Wintour shoulder.

How has the idea of resort collections changed?

It's not Resort anymore. It's another collection—in the story of Fall, pre-Fall, Paris/London, pre-Spring, Spring—called "cruise." It's like a code name, but the thing is that Chanel needs six ready-to-wear collections a year, every two months completely new things at the shops. There are hundreds of shops all over the world that have to have something new all the time or else there's no reason to go back. Or else you go to a place like Colette where they see 100 labels. If it's one label, this label needs to have something new all the time.

Why Miami?

The answer is very simple, because apparently [holds up a page from the April 24 issue of WWD showing that Florida is "the domestic and international destination most booked by travel agents for summer 2008"]. Plus, you know, there was never a relation between [Coco] Chanel and Miami, so we make one. [We're interrupted by the arrival of model Iekeliene Stange in a black-and-peach satin dress with one very special feature, which Lagerfeld then explains.] This is called the Anna Wintour shoulder—it is like the things she had at the Met. It was invented for her.

What are you reading?

"Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema." I will show you; you may laugh, but it's very interesting if you know all about Italian silent movies and the concept. It's a quite difficult book—it's not a novel, it's not a biography. " Women Who Write" and "Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings." Now we have blue tights!

Any summer plans?

I go to Monte Carlo and Saint-Tropez because I have a house there—and you know, [they are] not too far away. I've traveled enough this year—going to China twice and all that.

Are you doing any decorating these days?

Yes, I just finished my place on the Left Bank, which will be only in American Vogue and nowhere else. I am shipping my furniture that I collected from my apartment in New York in Gramercy Park and then I'm doing a town house in Paris for guests—but I don't live there. I'm doing a mix that I've never done yet. My private place is very, very, very modern: nothing done before 2000. No art, only glass and light. It's on the river, but I have to stay away from the windows because the [touring] boats, they [come by and] say, "and here lives Madame Chirac…" Thank God I'm not there all the time. So I bought next door a house, where I can mix eighteenth century with all the things from Art Deco and modern things. Mixing eighteenth century and Art Deco was never done like this. I have beautiful furniture from the eighteenth century: very, very French.

q&a cash and carry One August morning in 2003, J.L. "Red" Rountree walked into the First American Bank in Abilene, Texas, and handed the teller an envelope on which he'd written the word "robbery." Not long after he'd made off with a bag of the bank's cash—$2,000 in small bills— police chased down Rountree's beat-up Buick Regal, took the thief into custody, and started the wheels of legal justice turning. As bank heists go, this one would hardly be worthy of remark, were it not for the fact that at the time of his arrest, Red Rountree was 91 years old. The world's oldest bank robber is now the star of "This is Not a Robbery," the first film by directors Lucas Jansen and Adam Kurland, and the third to come to screens courtesy of Andrew Lauren Productions. Since launching the outfit three years ago, Andrew Lauren has proved himself a man of eclectic good taste—a bit like his father, Ralph—but according to both Lauren and his company's president, P. Jennifer Dana, Andrew Lauren Productions' consistency is its laserlike focus on compelling characters. "What I love about Red is that he's this guy who decides, at the end of his life, to write a whole new chapter," comments Lauren. "I think that story deserves to be told." The directors at the Tribeca Film Festival appear to agree: "This is Not a Robbery" premieres at the festival tomorrow. As they readied themselves for the film's debut, Lauren and Dana talked to Style.com about the timeless wisdom of F. Scott Fitzgerald, filmmaking in the iPhone era, and unlikely fashion icon Red Rountree.

Andrew, you grew up immersed in the world of fashion. Has that influenced you as a producer?
Andrew Lauren: I think the influence goes in the other direction. Great cinema creates a world, you know? Or it makes you look at your own world in a different way. That's incredibly powerful, and my father would be the first to tell you that he's taken a lot of his inspiration from movies. I probably inherited my love for film from him.

Well, there's the Gatsby connection—he did the costumes for the Redford film; you kicked off your producing career with "G," the hip-hop version of the story.
A.L.: Yeah, I was always a big Gatsby fan. It's the great American cautionary tale, isn't it? And Jay Gatsby is the classic American striver. As a character, Red Rountree had a similar appeal to me—here's this guy, the perfect American, he worked his way out of the Depression and never got so much as a speeding ticket, and then, just when the expected thing for him to do would be to, you know, wind down his life watching the world pass him by from his easy chair, he turns to the dark side. Young or old, you can always create a new persona. I find that quite inspiring in a perverse way.

P. Jennifer Dana.: Lucas and Adam have basically adopted the Red Rountree persona. They've both grown beards, and I'm pretty sure they're wearing their pants higher than they were when we met them.

A.L.: You heard it here first: Old-man pants are coming into style.

This is the first documentary you've produced. Are you planning on doing more?
P.J.D.: Docs weren't part of the game plan—we're a company that really likes writers. But we're also a company that, more generally, is interested in great stories, and in finding and developing new talent. In Red, Adam and Lucas had a story that was undeniably compelling, but because Red died in 2004, telling that story presented some inherent challenges. Which is an invitation to creativity.

A.L.: The fact that we came from a feature background really helped the film, I think. We were willing to play with unconventional solutions to problems like, how do we show the robberies? That's where the idea of adding animation to the film came from; a desire to show Red in action, and get away from talking heads and old interview footage of him from prison. You always ask yourself, "What's going to serve this particular film?" Like, our last release was "The Squid and the Whale," which we shot on Super 16. Now, that's not the ideal format for shooting a movie that you want to show on a big screen, but it was appropriate to that story. And ultimately, if the story holds up, if it's told really well, then it will hold up in a movie theater and it will hold up on an iPhone.

P.J.D.: There's our digital strategy in a nutshell: Tell good stories.

When photographer and video artist Brent Stewart chanced upon Harmony Korine in London five years ago, they were two Southern boys far from home and happy to hear a familiar accent. But the meeting proved to be one of like minds, as well: Korine and Stewart both wound up settling back down in Nashville, where a local filmmaking scene has blossomed around their friendship. O'Salvation!, the production company Korine founded with Agnès B., helped get Stewart's short film projects off the ground; Stewart has returned the favor by keeping tabs on "Mister Lonely," Korine's first film since 1999's "Julien Donkey-Boy." Stewart's fly-on-the-wall documentary about the "Mister Lonely" shoot, "The Lonely," will be released later this year; tonight, meanwhile, his photographs from Korine's set go on show at the Agnès B. boutique in Beverly Hills as part of the L.A. Art Weekend festivities. Here, Stewart tells Style.com about what Little Red Riding Hood and Abraham Lincoln get up to when they hang out together, and why French sportswear and Deep South cockfighting have more to do with each other than one might assume.

You and Korine seem to have been working pretty closely together for the past few years. When you met, was it one of those cases of instant creative simpatico?

I'm not sure I'd go that far—I mean, we liked each other, and I was already a fan of his work, but at the time we were both pretty involved in our own stuff. I was getting my MFA at Goldsmiths in London; he was there working on the David Blaine documentary for British TV. The connection was more basic—I think there was a level of regional identification. The work relationship didn't really get off the ground until we were both back in Nashville.

Samantha Morton and Diego Luna star in "Mister Lonely," and as best as I can tell from the synopsis, the movie actually has, you know, a plot. Is this Korine's big commercial picture?

Well, there's something to that. It is pretty straight-ahead for Harmony, but then again, I mean, the movie's about a Michael Jackson impersonator and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who travel to an impersonator commune at a castle in Scotland. So I'm not sure "commercial" is exactly the word. And then there's the parallel subplot, with Werner Herzog playing a priest, and a flying nun.…

That must have been a rather odd set.

Oh, man—just fascinating. You'd have these actors playing impersonators, and some of them, like the guy who played the Charlie Chaplin impersonator, they'd just stay in character through the whole shoot. The most interesting moments, to me, were the ones in between takes, where you really couldn't tell who was in character and who wasn't—I'd look through the camera lens and there would be Little Red Riding Hood and Abraham Lincoln, chatting it up with Sammy Davis, Jr., and meanwhile Chaplin's blowing by on his unicycle, playing a pennywhistle. I just kept shooting.

Was the documentary intended as more of a companion piece to "Mister Lonely," or will people be able to get it without seeing the film?

They might get more from it if they see the film, but I tried really hard to make the doc immersive and experiential and cinematic enough that it wouldn't just feel like a behind-the-scenes DVD extra. Having said that, it may wind up as a DVD extra. In Japan, anyway.

Korine seems to be spearheading quite the filmmaking renaissance in Nashville these days; he helped make your short "Blackberry Winter," for example. What does that scene look like from the ground?

The big thing is that Harmony paired up with Agnès B. on starting O'Salvation!—they're not just doing indie films, they're doing art projects and getting into some book publishing, too. So, yeah, they got behind "Blackberry Winter" and this other short I made with James Clauer, "Aluminum Fowl." That one played everywhere—Sundance, Cannes, you name it. Kind of a crazy movie, about two brothers into cockfighting down in Louisiana. O'Salvation! is helping me get my next short done, too; this one's a narrative based on a feature script I wrote. Two Mennonite sisters take their first trip into mainstream America, and it's like they're aliens watching us consume. I guess that's one thing Harmony and I do have in common, creatively. We're both interested in the people on the outside.

Nestled in a low-slung building only a stoplight or so from the behemoth Beverly Center, Opening Ceremony's Los Angeles outpost does exactly nothing to announce itself to the La Cienega traffic humming past its whitewashed facade. But anyone under the impression that founders and masterminds Humberto Leon and Carol Lim devised this modest storefront as a reproach to the typically more-is-more aesthetic of L.A. retail will be brought up short by the two SoCal natives' inspiration for the shop's second floor, which opens tomorrow. "We love strip malls," Lim says. "We always thought it would be amazing to fill one up with little shops from our favorite brands." "Like, we'd have our own block," adds Leon. "And our own parking lot." If that's the grand plan, Opening Ceremony L.A.'s second floor is a writ-small expression of the same concept: A petite walkway links pocket-size boutiques dedicated to brands such as Mayle, Nom de Guerre, the New York City vintage shop Exquisite Costume, and Opening Ceremony's own store label. One week shy of this upstairs mini-mall's public debut, the space was still empty and essentially raw. But neither Lim nor Leon seemed to be sweating the tight schedule as they talked to Style.com about Web sites, Wong Kar-wai, and giving West Hollywood a taste of the East Coast.

Mayle and Nom de Guerre are both brands you don't sell at the New York store. What made you decide to feature them so prominently in L.A.?

Carol Lim: We've always loved those lines, but Mayle and Nom de Guerre both have their own stores in New York and their own real presence there, so it would be a bit redundant for us carry them. Here, we have enough space to let them create a West Coast presence for themselves, through our store.

Humberto Leon: Like, the Mayle boutique will feel like Mayle. Jane's getting in tomorrow; she's going to paint her space herself. The Nom de guys are coming, too. The idea is pretty much, let's bring some New York City out west.

Has that process reversed at all? Have you noticed some West Coast influence seeping into the New York shop?

HL: Well, there are the reissued tees we did with Maui & Sons; they're pretty iconically Californian, and we're setting up an Amoeba Records station in New York, like the Other Music station we set up in L.A. But I don't think either of us are particularly interested in the clichés of California style or in taking a bunch of L.A. designers back east just for the sake of pointing out that, yeah, there are L.A. designers. We always try to dig a little deeper.

CL: Opening the Los Angeles store didn't get us thinking about California so much as it inspired us to think about America. We're on both coasts, there's a whole country in between, so what's American?

Let me guess: Stetson hats and Woolrich blankets?

CL: Good guess. So, yeah, those collaborations grew out of our having an American year, but working with Wong Kar-wai came out of the same place, in a way. He was having this Americana experience, too—it fit.

Speaking of Wong Kar Wai and the collaborative merch you just launched for "My Blueberry Nights"—how on earth did you make that happen? I've always had the sense he's rather elusive, Mr. Wong.

HL: Elusive, maybe, but friendly. And tall! We get approached for tie-in stuff all the time, and rarely if ever are we interested. One day it just sort of occurred to us—why don't we take the initiative, and approach someone we really love? And we really love Wong Kar-wai.

CL: That's definitely a direction we're excited about going in—more collaborations outside the fashion world. Like, right now we're planning a bunch of stuff around the Olympics.

HL: We are very, very excited about the Olympics.

Do you ever get overwhelmed, juggling so many projects at once? You're running the Acne store in New York, opening up the second story here, getting up and running for Opening Ceremony's Japan year in September…plus the showroom, plus designing the Opening Ceremony line, which seems to get bigger and bigger…and I presume there are a few projects you're not even talking about yet.

HL: The big project we haven't been talking about—until now—is that we're finally launching Opening Ceremony online. The complete store. Everything.

CL: Sometime this summer. It's like we're opening a third boutique.

HL: It really is, because we've tried very hard to make the online shop feel like Opening Ceremony; we want visitors to be able to explore and discover, you know? I mean, for people who don't live in L.A. or New York, this will be their Opening Ceremony experience. It's huge. We're not overwhelmed yet, but I think the servers may be. There's a lot to load.

When Target announced in January that Rogan Gregory would be designing a collection under its GO International banner, the response from the green community was a resounding: huh? After all, Gregory has, especially under the auspices of his 100 percent organic Loomstate brand, emerged as one of the fashion industry's model citizens of sustainability. Retailers such as Target, meanwhile, boast reputations a little less sterling—to put it mildly. Cheap duds designed to be worn a few times and tossed aside may delight the trend-obsessed, but for those in the eco-know, so-called "fast fashion" is an affront to all the less-is-more values held dear by proponents of conscious consumerism. Those folks cheer initiatives like Loomstate's T-shirt recycling extravaganza, which kicks off next week in cooperation with Barneys New York and the Sundance Channel show "The Green," but Rogan for Target had them scratching their heads. "It's complicated," says Gregory, in effect summing up the oxymoronic conundrum of shopping green. "In order to make any real impact, you have to reach the mass market. Sustainability can't be a cult taste; it can't be a luxury. And Target has been a great partner, in fact, because they pull this whole organic thing into the mainstream." In other words: Cool your jets, greeniacs. Rogan's GO clothes incorporate healthy percentages of organic cotton, linen, hemp, and bamboo, making the collection something of a landmark in the drive to convert fast fashionistas to the eco cause, whether they realize they're being converted or not. Here, Gregory talks Target and drops a few clues to the environments obsessing him most at the moment.

Given your commitment to the green movement, were you at all wary about collaborating with Target?

I knew that I'd only do a collection like this one if I had guarantees that it could be done in an ethical way. I'm against the idea of just, you know, adding more stuff to the world. But Target is smart, and the way this project has worked out, they've initiated one of the largest, if not the largest, runs of certified organic cotton ever. That, to me, is a real achievement—not only does it mean Target now has a system in place for perpetuating its commitment to organic clothes, but because of their clout, it also shows other mainstream retailers that sustainability is a realizable ideal.

Has the experience with Target encouraged you to introduce a lower-priced version of Rogan?

I've always wanted to do a lower-priced line. The way I've justified my prices on Rogan is that I only make a few of each thing, I make them from the best materials and with the best people, and if you wear a pair of jeans for four months straight, like I do, then the cost averages out. But not everyone approaches their wardrobe that way, and not everyone can afford a pair of $100 or $200 jeans. My sister's an academic, and over the years that I've been designing, she's asked me, "What are you doing? Who is this for? Is this an art project?" Maybe the most gratifying thing about having the collection out at Target in May is that I know my sister will be able to go into the store, and for $100, walk out with a bunch of stuff.

It seems as though you've been hitting on all cylinders since snagging the CFDA Award last year. There's the Target collection, and this Loomstate project with Barneys and "The Green," plus the everyday workload that goes along with designing Rogan, Loomstate, and A Litl Betr. I'm assuming you aren't getting on the surfboard much these days.

I'm probably going surfing tomorrow, actually. But, yeah, I'm busy. There are a couple jewelry collaborations I'm not quite ready to talk about yet, some plans in the works for a fashion week something or other, and then the big project right now is that I'm opening my new store in May.

What should shoppers expect?

Well, the space is automatically spectacular—the building itself is kind of a landmark. It's got character, and inside, there's 20-foot ceilings. I'm doing the whole thing in black, reflective surfaces, very clean and cool. I like that mix of the old and the new—soulful modernism, I guess I'd call it. I think I love designing spaces more than I love designing clothes, to be honest. So I've got a lot of projects, but the store, that one's kind of my baby.

Rogan will open at the corner of the Bowery and Bond Street next month.

She may not have made it onto Vanity Fair's women-in-comedy cover, but Casey Wilson is one female that fans of "Saturday Night Live" will soon find familiar. The 27 year-old is the newest member of the "SNL" cast, and though Wilson has some time to bide before she can make signature characters, like her quadriplegic stripper, a Saturday-night standby, her comedy bona fides suggest that "SNL" may have a Fey-level phenom on its hands. This summer, Wilson's "Bride Wars" script starts shooting in Boston, with Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway in the leads; she and her co-writer and frequent partner-in-comedy June Raphael will both take small roles in the film. Wilson will also be clocking screen time with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in Nora Ephron's new flick. In other words—when success comes in Hollywood, it comes at a gallop. Here, Wilson talks to Style.com about saddling up for the ride of her life.

Not like you're a disinterested party, but, pace Hitchens, are women funny?

Well, obviously I think so. And I have to tell you—"Saturday Night Live" has this reputation as a real boys' club, but my experience has been totally, completely the opposite of that. I walked into a situation where not only are the female writers and performers absolutely as important to the show as the men, they're arguably more important. Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph—when they speak, everyone listens. Because they're freaking hilarious.

Was it always your goal to be on "Saturday Night Live"?

Pretty much, yeah, but it wasn't like I went straight for it. Feeling like I was ready to send in my tape took me a while. After I graduated from NYU, June [Raphael] and I started doing this two-woman show, which we wound up taking to the Aspen Comedy Arts Festival, which in turn landed us a literary agent, which then led to our moving to L.A. and working on stuff like "Bride Wars." We thought everyone would love us as actors, but the industry was basically like, no, you're writers.

How did you manage to turn that impression around?

Well, June and I were still performing together, and I did some improv and some one-off shows; I kept myself in it. And I'd do the occasional audition, as well. But, I don't know, there was some kind of fearlessness I was missing—in order to succeed as a performer, and maybe especially as a performer of comedy, you have to have crazy nerve. Molly Shannon, for example, is someone I've always really looked up to, because her comedy is so physical and wild and unembarrassed and brave. If you're going to be part of a nationally televised show that airs live and do sketches that haven't even been brainstormed a week earlier, you really can't be afraid to fail.

What got you over the fear? Or are you over it?

I hesitate to even mention this, because it seems like kind of an 'oh poor you' thing to talk about in the context of an interview, but OK, so—my mom died a couple years ago, very unexpected. I went into lockdown for a while, just leaning on the writing; that felt like the safe thing to do. About a year and a half later, I started going out for parts again and getting back onstage. And nothing had changed except that I felt like, screw it, I might as well do whatever the hell I feel like doing. There's nothing to lose. And then things started to move very fast.

Are you comfortable with how fast your career is moving right now? Or is the sudden success freaking you out?

Maybe because I have a sense of the process that got me to this point, I mean, the "Bride Wars" rewrites, the meetings, the improv nights, I'm not sure it does feel like sudden success. Everything related to "SNL," that was very sudden—from the time I found out I was joining the cast to the time I could read on a blog that someone watching the show thinks I'm fat, that was about 30 days. That blog part, that could've moved a little more slowly. But hey—it's all material, right?

Bay Garnett and Kira Jolliffe have never been to an Oxfam they didn't love. Or a Salvation Army or a Goodwill, for that matter. The editors of Cheap Date, the British fashion (or anti-fashion, depending on how you look at it) mag with the cult following, have long been supporters of DIY style, be it high-end or culled from the bottom of the dollar bin. Now, after years of threatening to, they've finally assembled their collective thoughts on all things modish into one handy volume, "The Cheap Date Guide to Style" (Universe). We checked in with Garnett on the eve of its American publication to talk about red-carpet horrors, how to be true to your fashion self, and what she really wants to wear now.

So how did the book come about?

Kira and I always wanted to do a book. We couldn't stand the kind of style books that were out, that were based around celebrities dressing up and looking fake and dull. Style for us was always about individuality, being inspired by everything from punk rock to movies to absolutely anything—but in your own way. Not being dictated to, and definitely not aspiring to look like a celebrity on a red carpet, or a celebrity obsessed with big new expensive handbags, horrid jeans, and sunglasses. That seemed to be all there was out there. So that's where the book idea came from. A bit reactionary, I suppose.

What's the best bargain you've ever found?

A seventies Dior cape, which was cheap. A banana top that Chloé copied for its summer print about four years ago. A Ralph Lauren velvet jacket with a gold crest on the pocket. So much stuff!

As you point out in the book, style can't be bought. How, then, can it be acquired? In fact, can it be acquired at all?

I don't think GREAT or original style can be bought. But I do think there are different ways of looking at clothes, and definitely being more stylish because of it. It's about filtering information, absorbing stuff, getting away from being dictated to, and not buying into fads and trends. This automatically makes someone more stylish, I think.

You also caution readers to, ahem, "beware the insane language of fashion journalism." What exactly do you mean by that?

Fashion journalists can write nonsense sometimes. Of course there is fantastic fashion journalism. But sometimes it seems to be just page filler that preys on women's insecurities.

Who's the most stylish person you've ever met?

Probably Anita Pallenberg or Chloë Sevigny. They both have such originality and individuality. They're completely independent in the way they dress, and it is such an expression of them as people.

What do you really want to buy at the moment?

Good quality stuff: a beautiful cashmere jumper. I have a baby and I'm pregnant again. I don't have time to thrift, but now I do what other people have been doing for years—buying one simple beautiful thing. The last thing I bought that I loved was a black Yves Saint Laurent patent leather jacket—very "Belle de Jour."

What are you wearing today?

A big old Chanel sweater, Ugg boots, a cast around my arm as I broke it, long johns, and old jeans. This outfit is completely typical of me when I'm not working. I always wear my Stephen Sprouse leopard-print Louis Vuitton scarf, too, no matter where I'm going. It's about being warm and cozy.

Are the British really more stylish than Americans, as we're continually led to believe?

Not always. Americans can obviously have great style. I love how groomed and clean they are! The English are pretty slobby at heart, but they do have that punky thing. Maybe it's been lost, but you can't help but think of Westwood, the Clash—all this great wild style that came from the U.K.

Luis Bunuel and Antonin Artaud might have felt a need to shock their audiences into paying attention, but in today's permissive culture, art audiences have grown inured to shock tactics. Hoping to channel rebellious artistic energy into money-making, attention-getting trends, Blair Taylor, Peres Projects' New York director, has teamed up with Ellen Langan, art historian, critic, and director of Maccarone Inc., to co-curate "Sack of Bones," a group show at New York's Asia Song Society. With work ranging from the impishly irreverent to the in-your-face offensive (artists in the show include Dan Colen, Bruce LaBruce, Banks Violette, and Mark Flood), "Sack of Bones" provides ample opportunity to explore whether hardcore art can actually exist in our contemporary culture of cool, or whether art can now offer only thrills instead of shocks to the system. Here, Taylor talks about curating her first show of art that "kicks from within the sack."

Is the notion that art is inherently irreverent and rebellious a fallacy?

Yes! Art at this point is born obedient 80 percent of the time. It's not pretty.

Isn't it being too "pretty" the problem?

Well, I guess I was using "pretty" to be a little flip there, and not so much to discuss an aesthetic status quo. But, while we're here, I might as well add that I don't think "pretty" is as much a problem as "vapid." Art can be constructed to appear challenging and turn out to just be sulky in the end. That's more disappointing to me than a botanical print any day of the week.

What separates "cool" and hardcore art?

Most times, if artwork comes off as "cool," then it's the artist's fault and not the object's. By the same reasoning, hardcore art is made without that self-consciousness on the artist's part. You can tell when art exists because it has to.

Do you think that the crazy amount of money floating around today's art market is making artists complacent and too careerist, or is the romantic idea of the starving artist a destructive cliché?

I don't think artists have to starve to understand that they shouldn't rest on their laurels. Maybe the crazy money is bringing some kids to the adult table before they're quite ready, but it's also allowing some incredibly deserving artists to show their work. Thankfully, these things shake out over a long period.

So, how is this show challenging the process by which hardcore art becomes digested?

What's interesting about this show is that there's work from 1969 to now. And all together like this, it becomes really obvious that the million cycles and attitudes these objects are subjected to really aren't more important than the objects themselves. The artworks are the things that aren't fickle and aren't changing here. That's worth thinking about.

Should art shock, in order to be effective?

No way. Shock often just shortens the lifespan of an artwork, in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, when it works it can really be amazing. But that's one out of every 10,000 attempts. And after an artist does it once, they still might not be able to ever do it again. Probably, they shouldn't really try.

Do you believe artists sell out when they become successful or court success?

This question's a toughie. I don't want to get into a "what is success?" mode here. But, it's almost just as annoying when people make a big thing about refusing to court commercial success. Maybe that has something to do with the best period in any artist's career. Or maybe it correlates to a time when he or she isn't engaging too much with either the benefits or the dangers of success. I say, "Keep your head down and go." The tuck position makes for good aerodynamics.

Model, mother, photographer, retailer, designer—Helena Christensen is the acknowledged Renaissance woman among that class of cover girls known simply as The Supers. But one of Christensen's most far-reaching contributions to the culture has remained relatively unsung. Back in the early nineties—around the time the "Wicked Game" video in which she starred was making her a walking semaphore for beachy sexiness—the model showed her friend Marie-Anne Oudejans a few bolts of candy-colored cotton she'd purchased on a recent trip to Thailand. "She was always sewing cute little dresses," Christensen recalls, "and she made up a few for me out of those fabrics." The rest is Tocca history. Oudejans, then the assistant to photographer Peter Lindbergh, wound up spinning off the so-called "sari dresses" into not just a fashion brand, but a fashion juggernaut. An entire era of cutely bohemian dress-wearing style can be summoned merely by laying eyes on one of those Tocca originals. Well, fans can now lay eyes on them again. Christensen's West Village shop, Butik, for the moment has the exclusive contract on Oudejans' reissue of the sari dresses under the label Tocca Vintage; the store will be hosting a party for the brand on March 26. Here, Christensen takes a break from a trip to Rio, where she's been test-driving the Vintage pieces, to talk Tocca.

There was such a Tocca moment in the nineties—what do you think it was about those dresses that struck a nerve?

It's hard to define what makes a clothing piece a classic, but that's what happened with the Tocca dress. I remember I wore the dresses Marie-Anne made for me backstage at the shows, and immediately, all the girls wanted one in every color. It was just such a special little piece; very girlish, but sassy at the same time. The dress woke up the free spirit inside you.

How did the idea come about to relaunch the original styles?

Tocca came up with the idea, I guess, and then they approached me. I liked the idea a lot; those dresses bring back great memories…

Such as?

It seems like the whole period back then was one big fond memory, and the dresses stand out like bright, colorful lollipops of that time. I think I went through entire summers just wearing the dresses, every day! Once Mariana—Marie-Anne—and I had to go to a big event and I asked her to make me a special Tocca dress. She made me this long green mermaid dress, like an eccentric version of the short ones, but superlong and with sequins randomly strewn all over it. I still have that dress.

Obviously, fashion has moved on since these dresses were first introduced; do you find you wear them differently now, i.e., that you style them in a new way or pair them with different accessories?

I wouldn't wear them any other way than I always have. That's what made the dresses so precious—they're like jewelry, in a way, you just slip them on and step into a pair of sandals and it's perfect!

As you say, you didn't have a great deal of involvement in the Tocca Vintage launch, at least on a creative level. But a similar sensibility to the sari dress seems to inform your line with Leif Sigersen, Christensen & Sigersen. What's going on with that?

We're working on getting investors. We did two collections and now we need someone that can step in on the financial and technical side, as we ended up not being able to keep up with orders, which in a way is a luxurious situation to be in, but frustrating as well. I'm so busy right now —working on an exhibition in New York, and traveling quite a bit with my photography, among other things. At least getting dressed is easy.

At any point in the last few years, an observant consumer could stop, take a mental step back, and reasonably wonder: What the hell is going in Sweden? The buzz from the country's music scene has been deafening, while a no less impressive momentum has carried an array of savvy Swedish apparel brands to U.S. shores. Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, House of Dagmar, Hope, Whyred, Nudie—the list of these anti-H&Ms goes on, but perhaps no brand encapsulates the new generation of Swedish fashion better than Acne. Best known for its razor-sharp denim, Acne is in fact a collective comprising, in addition to its Acne Jeans fashion design team, a digital studio, a film and video production company, a marketing concern, and an editorial office producing the bi-yearly Acne Paper. And the empire is only growing: Today, Acne opens its first store in the United States, bringing the full range of its poetically fastidious sportswear to Greene Street in Soho; a Paris shop is close at hand as well. Here, Acne Jeans designer Jonny Johansson talks to Style.com about thinking small, the drawback to Sweden's creative explosion, and taking Acne global.

What should shoppers expect from the New York store?

With all our stores, we try very hard to be true to the location—you know, really get our hands around the space. No two Acne stores are ever exactly the same. It's not a McDonald's concept; what we try to bring to each one is a sense of creativity at work. We call the stores Acne Studios, and that's how we want them to feel—like studios. The aesthetic is quite Swedish, of course; there's no point building a French bistro on the Palais-Royal, if you know what I mean.

In other words, fealty to location has its limits.

Well, you have to be local at the same time that you're international, but yes, we try to reflect our own culture wherever we go. I don't mean Swedish culture so much as I mean Acne culture—like, when I say we want the Acne Studios to feel like actual studios, I mean, we want them to feel like our studio. We've always thought of the brand as its own little island, not trend-driven, not racing to keep up. What's exciting about opening our own store in the United States is that, finally, people can see the full breadth of what we do—our experiments, our inconsistencies.

What kind of experiments and inconsistencies?

Oh, like right now the thing I'm really into is making miniatures of the clothes. I wanted to see if it's possible to do like in the forties and fities, where the daughter or the son would be wearing the same thing as the mother or father, only in a perfectly scaled-down version. We've made copies of the adult clothes that are as small as a hand, just to see.

Just to see what?

What the pieces looked like small. What I found out is, the smaller the better. Tiny, everything looks amazing.

Speaking of small…Sweden isn't that big a country. Is every other person in Sweden a musician or a fashion designer? As a nation, you're punching way above your weight in terms of creative output.

No, you're almost right. There was a news report about this, in fact; I saw it the other day. For the past ten years, Sweden has had too many people who decide they want to be film directors, or musicians, or fashion designers, or work in TV. It's a problem. No one wants to be a doctor or an engineer anymore.

Maybe you should add a medical practice to the Acne collective.

We spent a long time struggling to define Acne. I think now that we have, the key is to remember that we can't do everything, even if we can do a lot.

Since founding the Rivington Arms gallery in 2001, Melissa Bent and Mirabelle Marden (whose parents are the influential abstract artists Helen and Brice Marden) have been at the forefront of Manhattan's downtown art scene. The former Sarah Lawrence classmates have launched the careers of artists such as Dash Snow and Dan Colen and currently represent a diverse roster of thoughtful and thought-provoking artists, including painter Mathew Cerletty and photographers Hannah Liden and Pinar Yolacan. They took time out from their current exhibit, "4 Weeks/4 Shows," a series of weeklong exhibitions by four emerging talents, to have an e-mail exchange with us.

Who are the four artists you're exhibiting now, and why did you decide to stage these truncated shows during the Biennial and Armory month?
Mirabelle Marden: In "4 Shows/4 Weeks" we're giving four relatively unknown artists weeklong solo exhibitions. It's exciting for us to change the pace at the gallery and take risks. We wanted to invigorate the gallery by doing something completely different, to remind ourselves how many possibilities there are when curating shows. It's exciting to do things a little differently—that's why we opened a gallery in the first place.

Why have you decided to stay away from Chelsea?

MM: We haven't decided to stay away from anywhere; we've always just wanted to be on the Lower East Side/East Village. It makes sense for us and our gallery. And it's proven to be a good decision, with the New Museum opening up two blocks from us.

Mirabelle, how does the work you respond to differ from the art you grew up around?

MM: My parents are both abstract painters, and at Rivington Arms we don't show a lot of strictly abstract work. But my parents are also both very diverse collectors and their approach to art and their aesthetics have strongly affected me. I think having artists as parents has given me, as a gallery owner and director, a different perspective—I try to see things from the artist's point of view at all times, putting the artist's needs and interests first.


As you mature past being the cool kids' gallery, how have your aesthetic and your gallery's goals changed?

MM and Melissa Bent: We've always thought of Rivington Arms as an artist's gallery. Our motivation has been to grow with our artists and promote them in the best way possible. Too often we've been nicknamed "the girls," which is not only condescending (we know of no young male art dealers who are called boys) but also sexist. Our goals have always, and will always be, to strive to curate strong exhibitions and to work with artists whose work interests us and whom we respect.


Do you think your high profile is an asset or a distraction for your artists?

MM and MB: The only reason we have any sort of profile is because of our gallery. We wouldn't be known without it, or our artists.

Yet it seems that what you wear, and where you wear it, receives more attention than most of your artists or their art. Are you concerned that some people might take you and the gallery less seriously as a result of the type of press you two get?

MM: I don't need to justify the wide range of press we receive, or my personal taste. The fact that I love lots of things outside of the art world doesn't interfere with being a gallerist. One of the reasons I wanted to own my own business was that I could set my own rules—I could wear what I wanted to work, for example. But I would never compromise my sexuality for fear of other people's reactions. I prefer to feel good about myself, and to me that's powerful.

There are bands that have launched a sound, and bands that have launched a scene or two, but very rare indeed are the bands that can lay claim to fomenting a global subculture. Prior to the August 1979 release of the first Bauhaus single, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," there was no such thing as a goth, per se—just a bunch of brooding misfits who liked to slump around to a dissonance-covered beat and call it dancing. Après Bauhaus, le deluge. Anyone who spent his or her teenage years clad in black and covered in pressed powder the color of flour has Bauhaus members Daniel Ash, Peter Murphy, Kevin Haskins, and David J to thank for giving their adolescence an overarching mood, community, and aesthetic. This week, the Bauhausers are saying "you're welcome" in a few different ways. Tuesday saw the release of the band's first studio album in 25 years, "Go Away White," a swan song conceived during the group's brief reunion in 2005. Details are leaking out about the forthcoming reunion of Love and Rockets, the group that formed out of the Bauhaus ashes. And tonight, ex-Bauhaus bassist Daniel J opens "Silver for Gold," his musical rumination on the life of Edie Sedgwick, at the Met Theatre in Los Angeles. Here, J takes a break from tech rehearsals to talk to Style.com about money, mythology, and, of course, music.

Wow, lots to talk about! Let's start with "Go Away White." Is that really it for Bauhaus?

That's it. The fact that there's a new record at all is down to coincidence and good timing. When the Coachella organizers came to us in 2005 and asked us to do a reunion show, the only reason we said yes was they were offering us a rather fantastic sum of money. Frankly. But when the time came to get together and rehearse, we found that we were really, really into it…So we did a few more dates, and snuck into a studio for a few days not having any idea if a record would come out of the sessions. We're all quite pleased with "Go Away White," but it seems best not to push it.

But now there's a Love and Rockets reunion on the docket…

Once again, I have to admit that money played a role in the decision. Those Coachella folks, they're irresistible. But, you know, the Bauhaus reunion was such a positive experience that in a way, getting Love and Rockets back onstage seemed like the natural next step. It helped convince us, too, that Love and Rockets seems to be name-checked by quite a few young bands lately; there's something in the ether—we're relevant again.

Any set-list hints?

The song I'm really into is our old cover of "Ball of Confusion." It seems quite appropriate to the world these days, dystopia and so on. We're playing early stuff, nothing from after '89.

And in the meantime, you're staging "Silver for Gold." Is this your first experience doing musical theater?

Yes and no. A little after 9/11, I did a kind of experimental thing at the Knitting Factory here, riffing off a solo song of mine, and there was a 12-minute play I wrote for a theater company in Atlanta about my teenage years as a punk. But this is the first time I've attempted anything on this scale. Ten songs, two instrumentals, monologues, costumes… real show, in other words. It's funny, because I was never one of those people obsessed with Edie Sedgwick—in fact, I'd always assumed she was uninteresting. But I happened to see this script about her, called "Girl on Fire," and I liked the title and stole it for a song. Didn't think there was much more in it for me than that, but one thing led to another thing, and here we are.

Is "Silver for Gold" based on that screenplay?

No, I gave Edie's story my own spin. I did a fair amount of research on her, and what I wound up seeing is that she's sort of like a modern-day Persephone, the girl who journeys to the underworld. He's not in the show, but Andy is Hades, obviously, and "Silver" stands for the silver at the Factory, to some degree. Bob Dylan comes in as Orpheus, and Paul Morrissey, Ondine, and Chuck Wein are the three heads of Cerberus, the dog guarding the gates of hell. Monique Jenkinson plays Edie, the girl who doesn't know she's living in a myth. We're all having a lot of fun.

Unlike, say, Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo, shoe designer Pierre Hardy is not necessarily a name with which the average fashion fan looking forward to the release of the "Sex and the City" film is conversant. Hardy's more of an insider's cobbler—he tends to attracts the kind of customer who considers no Balenciaga style too extreme. So when Gap announced that Hardy would be designing a range of shoes for the retailer, we were curious. Though Hardy's no stranger to collaborating, his other side projects, with Hermès and the aforementioned Balenciaga, are very definitely in the milieu of high fashion, which Gap, no matter who many cute separates it makes, is not. But judging by the shoes—pointed flats, chunky wedges, strappy flat sandals—there's not such a wide, er, gap between high price and high style. (You can judge for yourself—the styles hit U.S. shops today.) Here, Hardy talks to us about glamour, therapy, and what he loves about Gap.

Was it difficult to adapt your vision to a more mass-market point of view?

Actually, I accepted the challenge because it was interesting to test what I like to do in a different market. So the aim was not to adapt a recipe to Gap, but to try to find a new expression of what I love with different materials and different technology.

You also collaborate with Hermès and Balenciaga. What was it like working with Gap—any surprises or things that went differently from the way you thought they would?

The surprise has been that they have been quite easy people to work with. I was expecting many more constraints, but in the end, they really let me go wherever I wished to go. The fact that Gap is a really big brand meant that the collaboration was not so different from another one. I felt I got really great respect and enthusiasm for the proposals I made.

What were your inspirations for the line?

I tried to evoke the feelings of freshness, freedom, and spontaneity that are the kind of values from the early years of Gap. I also worked with the ready-to-wear collection.

Are glamour and mass mutually exclusive?

Because glamour supposes quite a lot of sophistication, it was not exactly the aim. I would say that I tried to introduce a twist of it in the collection by using some more sophisticated materials like patent or gold leather, bright and feminine colors, more feminine straps. So, I tried to reconcile them.

You were one of the stars of a Gap ad campaign in the U.K. and France. What was that like?

Surprising. I didn't anticipate the scale of the campaign and of the images. It was quite a shock to discover my portrait in the middle of the street. In a way it has been also a kind of therapy.

Do you wear Gap?

Yes! The shirts are great and the new slim jeans are perfect.

For an emerging athlete, that first endorsement deal often ranks as a rite of passage on par with any of the sporting victories that led up to it. After all, corporations don't lay down their cash and their brand equity for just anyone that knocks in a winning penalty kick or aces a serve on the grass at Wimbledon. The non-Amazons among us, however, must measure our progress through life without the aid of such Day-Glo-bright signals as sponsorship. Really, it's a muddle, the unendorsed life, a bad system that encourages wasted hours of wondering whether that quirky idea you've deposited your soul into is something genius, or more like its opposite. Quiksilver wants to remedy the situation. Taking a page from its surf 'n' snowboard playbook, the O.C.-based brand has marked its launch of the new Quiksilver contemporary womenswear line by opening siteLA, a shared space for six "visionaries in residence." The siteLA house in Silver Lake has its official coming-out party tomorrow night, and the young women who will be working out of it for the next year include a bicycling activist, an automotive designer, an architect developing mobile playgrounds and skate parks for inner-city youth, and fashion blogger Beth Jones, who talked to Style.com about the pleasures of getting sponsored.

So, I understand that siteLA is a work and event space for all six residents, but are you going to be living in the house as well?

No, no—lots of people hear "resident" and assume there's some kind of "Real World" thing going on. I mean, the girls are really great, and I'm sure I wouldn't mind living with any of them, but as much as we'll all be working here during the day and hosting events at night, I assume we'll be seeing plenty of each other as it is.

Quiksilver has given its imprimatur to a pretty broad range of projects through this initiative. What's yours?

Well, I write the blog The Vintage Society, and my project for the year is pretty much, you know, to figure out how to take what I'm already doing to the next level. I'm still sort of deciding what that means. What I think is really cool about the residency, and what attracted me to the call for applications in the first place, is that Quiksilver is really trying to support women with an entrepreneurial spirit—they just want to help open doors, to create a pathway for you to make your dreams a reality. That sounds so cheesy, but that's basically the idea.

What is The Vintage Society?

Like I said, it's a blog, but…OK, for years I had this daydream about opening a shop that sold redesigned vintage clothes. Very on-trend, you know, like what you'd see on the runway, but made from stuff that already existed. Anyway, I was formulating this idea and started writing this fashion blog, with vintage as a kind of jumping-off point. And I got a ton of readers. Which was surprising and amazing, and it made me realize that there was more I could do than open up some little shop. Not that I don't have any interest in that anymore, but I'd love to do more fashion writing, I'd love to get into styling, and mostly, I'd just love to develop the blog into the fashion resource it wants to be. A lot of potential directions, but those are the doors Quiksilver is opening for me.

Opening how?

By asking you what you need. What do you want to do? What has to happen to get that going? Who can we introduce you to? Stuff like that.

Were you working in fashion prior to launching The Vintage Society?

God, I wish. I was the girl in the cubicle, you know? Did sales for a while, booked speakers for events, worked in commercial real estate…cubicle to cubicle, for about five years. And I was starting to feel like, I'm this creative person, but if I don't start to make something creative happen soon, it never will. People don't just walk up to you one day and hand you the opportunity to do what you love.

No, first you have to apply.

Right, and go through a whole round of interviews, too. Not so bad, when you think about it.

Whether or not you count yourself one of Daryl Kerrigan's obsessed fans, there's no denying that the scion of East Village chic possesses that elusive thing, a readily identifiable look. You can conjure it up instantly—a streetwise, punk-spirited elegance so uncomplicated it can come off as accidental. Except it's not. Kerrigan has always been relentlessly precise in her work, whether refining the cut of the boot-leg pants that made her name in the nineties, or getting the exactly washed-out-enough finish right on a piece of silk destined for one of her signature bias-cut dresses. Since the turn of the millennium, when rapid expansion of the Daryl K and K-189 lines almost simultaneously made Kerrigan into a fashion star and imploded her business, everything about Kerrigan's brand has changed, and nothing has. You won't find any boot-leg pants at the Bond Street headquarters she reopened a few years ago; neither will you find a designer hatching plans for mass-market domination. But the look remains. As the first season of Kerrigan's new diffusion line, Kerrigan, hits shelves, the designer talked to Style.com about doing more with less and her antidotes to hopelessness.

Obviously, this isn't the first time you've designed a diffusion range. Was there something you missed about K-189 that inspired you to launch Kerrigan now?

I've always been a girl who likes to mix casual pieces into my wardrobe, and when I was doing K-189, I had an outlet for things like jeans, hoodies, worn-out tees. But Daryl K, the primary line, those collections are really about high-end fabrics, working with really beautiful silks and wools and materials with special finishes, and I've found that it's hard to incorporate those sportier pieces into Daryl K without sacrificing some of that line's integrity.

But Kerrigan comprises more than just tees and hoodies…

Well, the other reason I wanted to launch Kerrigan is that I get a fair amount of price resistance to my clothes. I think maybe that's partly because I make daywear, and I like clothes to have a certain simplicity; on the rack, that stuff doesn't read like it ought to be expensive. Like I said, it's about the fabric, the cut. But I also believe that part of the resistance has to do with my customer, and I mean that in the best way—my girl has never been, you know, the billionaire's daughter. She's got some grit to her, the arty girl who's doing her own thing, working her way up. I wanted to make pieces that girl could afford.

The debut collection is quite small, only 25 pieces or so. Are you planning to expand?

We might expand the line a bit, but to be honest, I like that it's small. I find I'm asking myself a lot of questions about the environment lately, on a daily basis, in fact, and it seems like the easiest way to be more green is just, you know, to make less. Buy less; throw away less. There's so much talk out there about local, organic, what have you; it's all very confusing. I mean, I read this article in The New Yorker the other day about how it's basically impossible to guess any item's carbon footprint, even if you're using solid logic. Apples from New Zealand are greener for me to buy than apples from upstate New York; how is that possible? But it's true. Anyway, it really seems like the answer is just to limit yourself to what's essential.

Are you hoping to make the line more sustainable?

Getting the line on its feet, I feel like I struggle enough with maintaining quality control. The lower the price point, the harder it is to make things that last. And making clothes that last, that seems like another easy way of being green. You ought to be able to wear things for a while. I'd be happy to learn more about it, sustainable production and all that, but then, all this global-warming stuff, at the end of the day it can just make me feel hopeless. That's when I switch the channel to celebrity news.

And that actually makes you feel more hopeful, not less?

Good point. Mainly it's a distraction—they are entertaining, those crazy celebrities. I've never been a big tabloid person, but every so often I just can't help myself. But in general, I do try to stay on the hopeful side of things—for my son, who's nine and a worrier, if for no other reason. Wearing pink right now, that cheers me up. I feel like people always associate me and my line with dark colors, gray and black and all that, but right now, I just want to wear pink all the time.

About a year ago, photographer James Gooding was flipping through a copy of The New Yorker when he came across an article that, once he'd read it, he couldn't shake. Titled "There and Back Again" and written by Nick Paumgarten, the piece was about urban sprawl and commuting. But as he cataloged the discontents of the exurb class, Paumgarten touched on a theory of a triangle of happiness. "Where you live, where you work, where you shop—those are the three points," explains Gooding. "And I began to wonder, where on that triangle do I find my happiness in a given day? Where does anyone?" Those questions went on to form the premise of Gooding's latest series of photographs, "The Triangulation of Happiness." Now on view at the Diesel Denim Gallery in Soho, the series is composed of triptych works, portraits of each of Gooding's far-flung subjects at home, at work, and at retail. The project that began with an article about commuting required Gooding to do a fair amount of commuting himself—par for the course for an Englishman preoccupied with the lifestyles and landscapes of his adopted United States—but before he hopped on a jet back to L.A., Gooding chatted with Style.com about peak emotions, Wikipedia, and life on the road.

In the New Yorker magazine article, the stuff about the live-work-shop triangle doesn't take up much space. It's like, one short paragraph. You seem to have extrapolated quite a bit from that.

Yeah, that paragraph was just a jumping-off point. His whole article made a big impression, but it was the idea of the triangle that got me painting images in my head. I kept imagining people ferrying themselves from one place to the other, always the same routine, and somewhere on that map of points they make, there's happiness. Floating around, elusive.

I find it a very oppressive concept. Like, we're all just rats creating our own mazes.

The concept struck me as both beautiful and sad. The thing about happiness is, we're not very good at measuring it for ourselves, or figuring out what in our lives genuinely makes us happy, versus what we only think does, or will. You may believe your happiness is about having a big house, but if having the big house means you have to spend all your time working at a job you hate, or even just tolerate, and it takes you two hours in traffic each way to get there and back, how happy has that house made you? Speaking from my own personal experience, I'd say that people have a set point of happiness—one person's up here, and someone else is down there—and most of what we do in the pursuit of happiness is just the seeking out of peak emotions.

Judging by your essays in the catalog, you got pretty immersed in your subjects' lives. How did you find all of them?

Honestly? Wikipedia. Well, that's sort of a half answer. I knew I wanted a good cross section, so I went to Wikipedia and looked up job descriptions. There's an entry on the site about a thousand pages long; all it does is list job titles. I scrolled through, picked out a few that seemed interesting—or in some cases, particularly uninteresting—and then I started sending out e-mails, seeing if my friends knew anyone who knew anyone, and so on. But some of my subjects I met on the road, too. That's an advantage of being English, occasionally—people are sort of intrigued by my accent, I think.

Shooting this series entailed a pretty much nonstop commute for you, and according to Paumgarten's piece, every extra ten minutes you spend getting from here to there knocks another ten percentage points off your cumulative happiness. So I must ask: How's your triangle?

Are you asking if I'm happy? That's a good question; I suppose I'm about as happy as I typically am. If you'd mapped my triangle while I was working on "Triangulation," at least the shooting part of it, it certainly would have looked rather strange—work, work, work; driving, driving, driving. Sleeping in motels, eating in the car, shopping for nothing but film. But I'm gearing up for another round of the same in the spring, so I guess that must mean I like to keep moving.

"The Triangulation of Happiness" is open through April 1 at the Diesel Denim Gallery, 98 Greene St., NYC, and will move to Galerie du Jour in Paris later this year.