loose threads

The Obama Effect Sweeps Fashion Week; BlackBook Downsizes

• The Obama effect is taking hold of New York Fashion Week as runways are more diverse this season than ever. Will the trend carry over to editorials and advertising? [NYT]

• Robin Givhan likens Hillary Clinton’s Vogue cover to “an oil painting by a modern-day John Singer Sargent,” while Obama’s, she writes, “has the self-consciously relaxed quality of something that might appear on a Facebook page.” [WP]

BlackBook magazine will be published eight times in 2009, down from ten in 2008. [NYP]

• Designer Elise Overland’s guilty pleasure: smoking opium in the desert. Now you know. [GlamChic]

• Chace Crawford reportedly missed the Alvin Valley show because he was stuck on the Gossip Girl set. He supposedly wanted to watch Matt Damon’s little sister, Sarah Bradford, walk because they are secretly dating. [NYP]

The Obama Effect Sweeps Fashion Week; BlackBook Downsizes