loose threads

Amazon Buys Zappos; Abercrombie CEO Made $15.9 Million Last Year

• Amazon.com just bought online shoe retailer Zappos for $920 million. Amazon’s CEO announced this with a YouTube video. [Valleywag]

• The highest-paid retail executive in 2008 was former Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr., who raked in $30.2 million (this was his second year at the top of the list). Number two was Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael S. Jeffries, who made a paltry $15.9 million. [WWD]

• CFDA menswear nominee Michael Bastian is creating a co-branded collection with Gant for fall 2010. [WWD]

• After announcing earlier this month that it would not show during London Fashion Week, British brand Aquascutum has decided to hold a presentation in its Regent Street store. [British Vogue]

• Guy Trebay delves into the polarizing nature of souvenir T-shirts in the Hamptons: “Some lucky folks have managed to score shirts from Big Olaf’s Ice Cream in Sag Harbor — their design, as the writer Colson Whitehead noted in his recently published novel Sag Harbor, resembling less an ice-cream cone than a dancing sex toy.” [NYT]

• Hockey player Sean Avery has signed a yearlong contract to advise a small menswear label. [WWD]

Amazon Buys Zappos; Abercrombie CEO Made $15.9 Million Last Year