loose threads

Gisele Rumored to Be in Balenciaga’s Spring Ad Campaign; the Times Declares Turbans Trendy

• Gisele, who closed Balenciaga’s most recent show, is rumored to be starring in the label’s spring 2011 campaign, shot by Steven Meisel. [WWD]

• Seven for All Mankind is issuing a line of anniversary jeans in honor of its tenth birthday. There will be five style’s incorporating the brand’s signature elements, and prices will range from $255 to $750. [WWD]

• Turbans are having a moment, according to the Times. [NYT]

• Alber Elbaz unveiled the Christmas window displays at Parisian department store Printemps, which feature puppets based on his sketches. Elbaz quipped, “It’s quite bizarre to see your cartoon in the windows dancing and running. I was just told that each puppet will be running in two months about 200 kilometers, so I’m thinking, God, how many calories are they burning there?” [WWD]

• The New York Times’s critical shopper visited all of Marc Jacobs’s West Village shops, and his children’s store was the clear favorite. “The most respectful of the Jacobs stores emphasizing actual clothes was the one for children, which carried pieces chipper enough that most adults wouldn’t look sensible in them, and fantastic enough that one might legitimately get angry at a child for outgrowing them.” [NYT]

• Former Lucky creative director Andrea Linnett just launched a new website called I Want to Be Her. It features fashion illustrations by Anne Johnston Albert, who drew Linnett for the back page of Lucky each month, and each item in the drawings is attached to a real product that viewers can click to buy. [Fashionista]

• The Gap just opened its first Chinese store in Shanghai. About 70 percent of the inventory comes from American collections, while the other 30 percent is from Japan, and all of the products have been resized for Asian body types. [WWD]

• TV shopping is entering a “golden age,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Online shopping has actually helped TV shopping, since people are now more comfortable buying things they can’t actually touch or try on. [WSJ]

• Tom Sykes, who co-authored the Isabella Blow biography Blow by Blow with Isabella’s husband, Detmar Blow, was not happy about the launch party Lauren Goldstein Crowe threw for her rival biography, Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion. Sykes said, “Isabella loathed her stepmother, so I would not take her presence at a book’s launch party to be a particularly powerful endorsement of its integrity.” [Page Six/NYP]

Gisele Rumored to Be in Balenciaga’s Spring Ad Campaign; the Times Declares Turbans Trendy