Julia Restoin-Roitfeld likes to say that fashion was "always around" when she was growing up. This typical bit of understatement pretty much summarizes her iconoclastic approach to building a career in the fashion industry: Rather than assuming the role of heir apparent to, say, her mom—Carine Roitfeld, editor in chief of Paris Vogue—Restoin-Roitfeld has charted a path through the family business as peripatetic as that of any average Parsons grad. There was the internship at Visionaire, another one working with Craig McDean, some freelance gigs, a little modeling on the side. Normal-normal. Now, Restoin-Roitfeld is coming into her own, on her own. The up-and-coming art director conceived the new Rock & Republic ad campaign set to feature in September's fat fashion books, and more projects are underway. Here, she talks to Style.com about keeping fashion in the family.

Though it launched, ironically, having little to do with clothing, 11-year-old Acne has established itself as the go-to brand for fashion-forward denim and great basics. Never one to rest on his laurels, creative director Jonny Johansson is widening the label's purview with today's Copenhagen fashion week launch of a new high-end division called New Standard. Here's what he had to say about it.

How will the new collection function in relation to the Acne line?

For me it's a matter of different proposals in relation to the creative collective—it's about giving room to different ideas and concepts.

"Leaving Las Vegas" director Mike Figgis has turned his eye to fashion, kind of, with a short film and photo installation piece, created in collaboration with photographer Massimo Vitali. It's called "Piazza di Spagna," and it was shot on location in Rome. Featured actress Katie Saunders plays four different characters, two of whom are exaggerated fashionista types. The other two characters, by contrast, are a starry-eyed tourist and an up-to-no-good ne'er do well. Style.com caught up with Figgis at the film's premiere at London's Somerset House last night, which was attended by Jimmy Choo, Agent Provocateur founder (and Vivienne Westwood scion) Joe Corre, Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, "The Wire"'s Dominic West, and designer Agnès B., whose company underwrote the project.

How did you and Massimo Vitali meet and how did you decide to collaborate on this project?

The second season of "Mad Men" won't be making its official debut until Sunday night, but yesterday evening, Michael Kors lifted the veil for a lucky few when he hosted a private screening of the first new episode of the Emmy-nominated period drama. Invitees not only got the scoop on the show's slow-burn cliffhanger, but they had the chance to down cocktails with cast members, too. Kors' reasons for throwing the shindig were simple enough: He's a huge fan, and he wanted a sneak preview. "Well, you know fashion people; we always want to see things first," he wisecracks. "But seriously, I just want to celebrate the show. It's so rare to see television that's both seriously smart and seriously stylish. I was hooked from the get-go." So hooked, in fact, that "Mad Men" was a key influence on Kors' Fall 2008 collection—which, in a lucky trick of timing, should be arriving in stores any minute now. In the meantime, Kors talks to Style.com about his guilty viewing pleasures, why specs are sexy, and the many reasons everyone's mad about "Mad Men."

Berlin's homegrown chic bubbles up from the streets. And Berlin-based street artist XOOOOX, whose life-size, Banksy-style stencils of impeccably stylish women culled from the advertising of fashion houses such as Balenciaga and Chanel have adorned cities like Milan, Paris, and New York, gives that chic back. The women who inspire the art might never walk the streets where XOOOOX's art appears, but for those who do, the black-and-white images sprinkle élan and elegance free of charge. This evening, on the opening night of Berlin fashion week, the artist is launching "Molotov High Heels: New Works by Street Artist XOOOOX" at CircleCulture. She took some time out before the opening to chat with Style.com about her take on the world of high fashion.

If you were among the 137,500 lucky few who scored a ticket to last weekend's Glastonbury festival, you may have done a double take by the Q Stage on Sunday afternoon. Whether it was the sweet, sweet sound of an electro-pop revival that stopped you in your tracks or that the synth-driven charge was being led by a blonde, bangs-sporting Stevie Nicks lookalike (the hard-rocking seventies Stevie, not her latter-day, Wicca high-priestess incarnation), it's likely that you momentarily took pause to revel in the musical stylings of Pip Brown, a.k.a. Ladyhawke—and even more likely that you stayed through her whole set. "She's one of my heroes," the New Zealand native says of the comparisons she's been getting to the Fleetwood Mac front woman. "I'm flattered, but it's embarrassing when I read that stuff because there's no way I'll ever be as good a singer—or as crazy a party animal as her!" With an anachronistic video for her first single, "Back of the Van," circulating the Internet, the London-based Brown is definitely in the business of paying homage to rock gods of old—which might be what makes her a favorite with deities of today. Two months before her first album debuts, Ladyhawke can already count Paris It band the Teenagers, Courtney Love, and electronica queen Peaches among her fans. Coming off three live performances at Worthy Farm and in the wake of the release of her second single, Brown took a moment to talk about her new record deal, her travels down under, and her Stevie-meets-Seattle style.

How did you come up with your alter ego—a big Richard Donner fan, are we?

Not a huge fan, I just love that particular movie. The name fitted me and my sound perfectly, I thought.

And that sound is…

Guitar and synth-pop with an old-school edge.

You're based in London now, but you were in Australia and New Zealand before that. Do you think having the exposure to so many different scenes has helped shape your music?

Traveling really just exposes you to different sounds and different ways of doing things. You get to see bigger cities and meet loads of people and all these experiences mount up to influence not just your sound but your attitude and outlook on things. But my family are very musical and I was surrounded with music my whole childhood—my stepdad was a jazz drummer and my mum a singer, and they were very supportive of me, so it was easy to be able to explore music and different instruments.

Who are your major influences, then, and what are you "exploring" right now?

David Bowie, ELO, Prince, Fleetwood Mac, Kim Wilde, Nirvana, Joan Jett…loads more! Right now I'm listening to Justice a lot, the Teenagers, Cut Off Your Hands, and Lightspeed Champion.

You definitely seem to be channeling Nirvana a bit, at least with your onstage look. How would you describe your personal style?

I wear a mixture of mid-nineties flannel, animal-themed T-shirts, Doc Martens, and black hats. My style is a little confused but it works for me (I think!)

Your haircut is all Stevie, though.

My hair has been like this for years! The person who cuts it now is a guy called Robbie at Taylor Taylor in London. He has the cut down. I'm too scared to let anyone else touch my hair!

What was the inspiration for the throwback video that you did with Kinga Burza for "Back of the Van"?

Kinga contacted me on MySpace just to say she was a big fan and would love to one day meet up. We ended up coincidentally meeting at a show through a mutual friend from Paris. We got on really well and I asked her if she'd be interested in doing the video. She was really into the song and idea and we discovered we both had the same desire to make a video with a similar feel to the Jacksons' "Can You Feel It"!

Having been accustomed to producing everything yourself, what does your recent deal with Modular Records mean for you as an artist?

It's great to be signed to a label with so many great artists on it, and with such a solid reputation. Pav, the owner of Modular, heard some of my demos and loved them. The rest is pretty much history!

Ron English loves billboards. And Ron English hates billboards, too. Artist that he is, English has made a career out of this ambivalence: Some of his more notable culture-jamming exploits include mounting Ronald McDonald parodies on the unsuspecting ad space hovering over Manhattan and Dallas, Texas, and papering over Apple campaigns with his own "Think Different" riffs starring the likes of Charles Manson. So it's rather surprising to find that English's current project is a corporate commission: He's one of five artists participating in Ray-Ban's "Project Colorize," which launches tomorrow with the 6:30 a.m. unveiling of English's latest billboard, a Day-Glo celebration of the new rainbow-hued Wayfarer frames. Co-conceived by Ray-Ban and Marie Claire, Project Colorize also features work by the artists Tara McPherson, Scott Alger, Queen Andrea, and Toofly and will kick off with some as-yet-unspecified antics inspired by Charlie Todd's Improv Everywhere stunts (you can watch the artists in action here). And for the next two weeks, anyone looking to soak up the complete campaign can head over to Henri Bendel, where Project Colorize has established a general occupation. And in the meantime, as he prepares for a rare bought-and-paid-for unveiling, English talked to Style.com about billboard thievery, brand hacking, and why he's OK with doing business's bidding.

Your notoriety as an artist comes from staging guerrilla raids on corporate branding. Didn't you have any reservations about taking part in what is, essentially, a marketing campaign?

No, and I mean that. I wouldn't work on a campaign for the Hummer, but I like Ray-Ban and I liked what they were proposing. You know, for me, the problem with billboards isn't that they advertise, per se—it's what they advertise, sometimes, and more than that, it's the fact that billboards offer no opportunity for escape, for saying, no, I don't want to look at that. Like, when a commercial comes on, you can change the channel, or you can turn off the TV. But if you're driving along some highway and there's a giant billboard up ahead, well, you're going to see it, and on some subconscious level at least, you're forced to take it in. And there's nothing you get in exchange, which is the other comparison I'd make to TV, or to radio—at least with a commercial, that sponsor is underwriting a program you want to watch. What Ray-Ban is doing seems to me to be equitable in that way.

How so?

Because these billboards, they're artworks. It's branding, yes, but more in that sense of a corporation attaching itself to something beautiful or new or interesting by choosing to support and promote it. This isn't something any of us are getting paid to do—all Ray-Ban's done is set us up with an art school-type project, like, they gave us a brief, and now they're bringing our work to the public. A campaign like Project Colorize, it strikes me as finding a nicer dynamic between the folks pitching a product and the ones getting pitched. It's like asking for consumers' consideration, which, from a marketing perspective, seems like a better way of engaging people's attention.

That's an interesting phrase, coming from you—"from a marketing perspective…"

Like I said, the thing that really bugged me about billboards was how inescapable they were, and how impossible it was to argue against whatever message they were selling. I mean argue in the sense of—bring an alternative viewpoint to the public square. But that's also what makes billboards really effective. When I first started stealing billboards, it was with the clear idea that the best way to argue against Joe Camel, for example, would be by appropriating not only his image, but also his medium. Billboards are just as effective as a means of subversion as they are a means of promotion, if not more so. Camel actually offered to pay me to stop hacking their brand—more money than I've made from all my work as an artist since.

Does it feel good to know that, for once, no one's going to paint over your billboard as soon as possible after it goes up?

Sure, but, you know, it's funny. Over the years, I've developed a pretty interesting relationship with the billboard companies. There's a guy, one of the big billboard magnates, and in a weird way we've come to terms with each other. I need him, and he doesn't need me—in fact, he'd love to stop me doing what I do. But for whatever reason, and I won't speculate, he doesn't. Advertising is always a battle, and I guess no one knows that better than the people in advertising.

Blake Mycoskie is crazy. Good crazy, but still: A recent Tuesday morning finds the Toms Shoes founder arriving at his company's hangar-like headquarters in Santa Monica in mismatched Toms, a captain's hat, and spirits so high one has to assume they've been overcaffeinated. Or maybe that's simply symptomatic of a brain whose wires are capable of a crossing so poetic and profound as the business plan Mycoskie cooked up for Toms not quite three years ago. For every pair of Toms sold in stores like Oak and American Rag, one pair is given away to a person in need. The formula is simple, just, and from a business perspective, seemingly demented. ("Actually," Mycoskie says, "we're already profitable. Which I hope encourages other people to rip off the one-for-one idea.") A former tech entrepreneur who launched Toms as a side project, Mycoskie threw himself into the venture full-time after heading up the brand's first "shoe drop" in 2006. That trip—a Toms giveaway extravaganza that took Mycoskie, his polo mentor, his parents, several Toms staffers, and a few intrigued friends on a tour of some of the more impoverished places in Argentina—is documented in the short film "For Tomorrow," which premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. This year, he expects to give away at least 200,000 pairs of Toms. In the meantime, Mycoskie talks about moviemaking, taking design inspiration from horses, and why, even if charity doesn't begin at home, it should stop there along the way.

This sounds kind of idiotic, but until I watched "For Tomorrow," it had never occurred to me that shoes were so important. Obviously, owning a pair of shoes is a quality-of-life issue, but it's hardly intuitive that something so basic could also affect a person's health and the future of whole communities. How did you make that connection?

It wasn't intuitive for me, either, but then I went down to Argentina to learn how to play polo, and while I was there I met some kids, and the shoe thing became pretty instantly obvious. At first, it was a quality-of-life issue for me—these kids were walking miles to school, miles to get water, in bare feet, and that pained me. But the more I looked into it, the more I became aware of the medical ramifications of not wearing shoes, like there are diseases that come in through the feet, and—

Stop. I suspect I'm a little squeamish about foot-borne diseases.

Wow, I could show you pictures from Ethiopia that would blow your mind. Podoconiosis is rampant there. It's a disease that comes from working barefoot in regions with a high silicon content in the soil, and it makes people's feet swell up, like—

Aaaahhhh!!! Back to shoes? Please? Back to fashion…?

I was getting to that. Podoconiosis sort of inspired our new launch of a boot-style Toms for women. Polo and podoconiosis. I realized I was going to need a higher-end style if I wanted to extend the one-for-one formula to the podoconiosis victims, because the footwear they need is really specialized and expensive. Which is where the polo comes in, because I wanted to make a boot that was wearable for fall, but still looked very Toms, you know? And then I started thinking about the bandages polo players use to wrap their horses' legs. They're quite sexy, in a way—I even made a movie about it.

Another documentary?

Nope. An actual narrative short I wrote and directed. "For Tomorrow" got me totally inspired. It's about a girl who dreams of marrying a polo player when she grows up, and then she does, and then she discovers that she's destined to be a polo widow, the analogue being a golf widow here in the States. Her husband loves his horse more than he loves her, maybe—she has to steal a trick from those polo bandages in order to get his attention. Which is where the Toms boots come back in. But seriously, the wraps, they're very erotic.

I think we've stumbled onto rather awkward territory for an interview again. Let's talk about shoe drops. I noticed on the Toms Web site that you're taking applications for people who'd like to participate in a drop. Where are you planning to go next?

This isn't next, but later this year we'll be doing our first drop in the United States. It's unbelievable to think that, even here, lack of shoes is an issue, but when word started getting out about Toms, I'd get letters from parents and from teachers, begging me to help out their kids. It's been a while in the planning, but we'll be dropping shoes in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. Which means, maybe, that some Toms-wearing hipsters who head down there for Mardi Gras or something will actually run into kids wearing the identical shoes. That's one-for-one in action. I like that idea.

Oskar Metsavaht, the designer behind Brazilian powerhouse brand Osklen, hasn't followed a conventional career path. A physician by training and an avid surfer, skateboarder, and snowboarder, he entered the design world in 1989, creating activewear for fellow fans of his favorite sports. A decade later, he began to evolve a high-end effort that introduced elements of luxe to his signature aesthetic. Now, nearly 20 years after he first began, he has seven flagship stores, including outposts in New York, Tokyo, Rome, and Geneva, and has become perhaps the most successful designer to expand beyond Brazil's borders. He took a break from São Paulo fashion week to share some insights about his journey so far.

What made you want to go into design?

For me art means the creative process, not the purpose of what you're doing. To me medicine is an art, not a science. I was a successful physician, but the lifestyle didn't agree with me. I wanted to find a way to express my ideas.

How did Osklen come about?

In the beginning Osklen was a lifestyle brand. Jackets for snowboarding, bikinis, T-shirts for surfers. But then, in the nineties, when I looked at the kind of lifestyle my tribe had, it seemed cool and special, and Okslen began to be more involved with "fashion." I decided that I had a style, and I only had to channel that style into a fashion language. It was a very gradual evolution.

So what defines your tastes then?

I'm a surfer, I like to snowboard and skateboard. I like to wake up early and go surfing, but I also like to go out late at night. I like art exhibits, but I also like reading skateboarding magazines. I am an environmentalist—not eco-granola, but scientific and informed.

Who are some of your favorite fellow Brazilian designers?

Reinaldo Lourenço and Gloria Coelho. Reinaldo's work is feminine in the best way and modern. Gloria's work is very strong. For swimwear, Lenny. Her work has a sophisticated elegance but with a Brazilian feel.

How do you see Brazilian fashion evolving?

I think we're like Italy was 30 years ago. We're learning to work with the industrial process and to produce the best quality. We have good self-esteem, we see that we can do something original. The generation before mine would just copy.

What do you think needs to happen in order for Brazil to make a bigger impact globally?

If Japan is technology and France is high style and India is philosophy and spirituality, then Brazil has a chance to be the environmental and socially sustainable country. I'm sure everyone would love to buy products with a Made in Brazil label if they knew that these products were made to be sustainable. It might be more expensive, but I think this is the new luxury. We need to embrace these values.

Do you design with these values in mind?

Yes. It's funny—in my recent show I used a material that people didn't like, crocodile, and some people criticized this, saying, "Oh, it's not sustainable," etc., but they weren't informed. If there's one thing I hate, it's hypocrisy! There is actually an overabundance of crocodiles in some parts of Brazil , near the Amazon, and they have to control the population because they threaten the ecosystem and the people living close by. These indigenous people sell some of the skins, so purchasing them is actually sustaining these people as well as the environment.

Malcolm McLaren has made misbehavior his specialty ever since he turned the Sex Pistols into a worldwide music and style phenomenon back in the mid-1970's. But though his bad-boy antics are well known in the areas of music and fashion, McLaren has spent little time in the art world. That might be about to change thanks to "Shallow (1-21)," an installation he created that consists of 21 "sound paintings" (think film snippets of everything from Jayne Mansfield discussing fashion to William S. Burroughs reading from "Naked Lunch," with a soundtrack of pop classics such as Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" and Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart"). It's scheduled to be screened in Times Square starting June 26 as part of an artist video series under the auspices of Creative Time, a New York public arts organization (it will also be included in London's Royal Academy of Arts exhibit on William Burroughs at the end of the year). Style.com caught up with McLaren last week in Paris, where "Shallow" was showing at his old friend Martine Sitbon's Rue du Mail space on Friday.

"Shallow (1-21)" started with a group show held last year at Paul Judelson's 1-20 Gallery in New York. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

The curator, artist Stefan Brüggemann, insisted I take part. "Do whatever," he said, "but do something that is inspired by, or a comment on, the word 'shallow.' " All my life and times as an artist have been driven by pop culture, its outlaw spirit, its glory in the amateur, its sexual liberation, and its group psychology. So I thought, what if I grabbed chunks of pop music and stuck them together in a way to describe those feelings? The shallow experience in regard to pop culture seemed to be a good place to start. The next stage was simply to choose certain portraits of people imagining, anticipating, wishing, hoping, wanting, contriving to have sex. I plowed through an archive of sex movies. Then I spliced, slowed down, and focused in to make the portraits, and then slapped music onto the picture in a cut-up way. The portraits couldn't speak and didn't have any narrative. This is determined by the music, so that their feelings and my feelings are the same. I showed just a few of these last year.

What attracted you to cut-ups?

I was first exposed to cut-ups by William Burroughs and "Naked Lunch." That certainly had a major impact on pop culture and art, and eventually fashion, via punk. This is consistent with my style and way of working for the past 30 years—using both an aural and visual language. It's what the media once labeled "punk," "deconstruction," or "appropriation." Jayne Mansfield's thoughts on fashion was just one of many pieces from a pop archive of trivia that I found on a CD when trawling for all kinds of material to cut up. In this instance, I cut Jayne's interview with William Burroughs reading from "Naked Lunch" and put both to a mambo beat.

What has the interest from collectors been?

There has been a lot of serious interest since the work was shown two weeks ago at Basel, and we are now in discussions with a number of collectors, and gallerists and museums.

What else are you working on?

I'm writing my first musical for the stage. It will be about music and fashion.

You live in Paris. What do you like about it?

I live part of the year in Paris. I have a studio with an extraordinary north-facing window, high up on the rooftops behind the Folies Bergère. It once belonged to the painter Kees van Dongen. I like it here because you can work, research, and think clearly here without too much interference. Nothing changes and very little happens in Paris. This is a great place to work without distraction—and then I run away to New York, where I have a life!

According to Joan as Police Woman's Joan Wasser, pretty is the new black. And sincerity is the new irony. And accessible is the new indie. Wasser's not being glib; far from it. Though she launched her career contributing vocals and violin to such abrasive bands as Those Bastard Souls and the Dambuilders, Wasser has mostly made a habit of turning up wherever the loveliest music around is being made—lending a hand to Rufus Wainwright, say, or joining Antony's Johnsons crew, or starring as the subject of then-boyfriend Jeff Buckley's ode, "Everybody Here Wants You." Or, more recently, debuting her own album of sui generis, torch-inflected, subversively beautiful tunes. Real Life was released last year to reviews that would make a lesser woman get a little big in the head, but Wasser's been a supporting player in the music scene for long enough to know better. (Humility is the new rock-star attitude.) "I've worked for a few genuine stars, and mostly those people are great," she says. "But of course, the moments that leave the deepest impression are the ones where I was like, I would never treat anyone that way. So I try not to." The new Joan as Police Woman LP To Survive lands on record store shelves today; here, Brooklyn-based Wasser tells Style.com why soul is the new punk.

There are so many influences operating in your music, it's hard to find a language to capture it. How do you describe your sound?

I've always found it pretty much impossible to describe my music; I'm too close, you know? But there was this one review in The Observer, in London, and I like it so much I'm thinking about adopting it as my shorthand. He said I sounded like—wait, you know what, I'm going to find it and read it to you.

So you do, in fact, read your reviews.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Real Life, that was a record where I felt like I was testing myself as I wrote, entertaining different aspects of my taste and my songwriting sensibility, but the response I got to that record let me relax a little more into my own thing. Does that make sense? It's like, I could let the songs take me where they wanted to go, because I wasn't constantly worrying, is anyone going to get this? OK, I found the quote. Ready?

Shoot.

According to The Observer, Joan as Police Woman "is what Chopin would sound like now if he was a modern-day multi-instrumentalist with a passion for Al Green and a voice like Roberta Flack." I was like, cool, I'll take that. Is it weird I just read that to you?

Not at all. Do you listen to a lot of soul music? It seems like the one sound that's not on your very long résumé.

It's my favorite. My favorite-favorite. That music comes from such a deep, honest place. I mean, now and then I like to listen to some lighter stuff, too, but mostly I want to listen to, like, Donny Hathaway. That shit is just undeniable. And I learn from that, I do. When I first started writing songs, I'd use all this poetic imagery, metaphors and things, and it's been a process of stripping that away and just getting down to the feeling. You listen to a great soul track, and you realize—when you're in the feeling, there's no time for metaphors, there's no time for, 'oh, the sky is blue.' It's 'baby, baby, don't leave me.' Because if baby does leave, that sky won't be there tomorrow. It doesn't matter.

You started your solo career relatively late. Was it something you were always planning?

No… You know, for a long time, I just didn't have anything to say. Or, maybe the better way of explaining why it took me so long to start writing my own songs is to say, I got to speak through my violin, and that was enough. And once I began to think, maybe it's time to start speaking with words, it took me a while to figure out how to frame those words within songs. But I've been lucky to work with so many amazing artists, including the musicians who play with me now, because all of those experiences filtered through me and made me ready when the time came to do my own thing. Now it's like, the music is what comes out of me when I'm searching for a sense of peace.

Though he sent his first gender-bending collection down the runway more than 30 years ago, fashion's resident enfant terrible, Jean Paul Gaultier, is still the go-to guy for envelope-pushing types. Like his highly recognizable designs, his fragrances have also earned icon status—torso-shaped bottles that house the scent equivalents of Madonna's cone bra from the Blonde Ambition tour or Marion Cotillard's mermaid-inspired couture dress from the 2008 Academy Awards. In anticipation of the release of his newest perfume, Ma Dame, and its international ad campaign starring Agyness Deyn, Style.com caught up with the designer at his maison de couture to talk about feminism, fragrance sacrilege, and his kind of woman.

In your line of fragrances, where does Ma Dame fit?

I have really built a family of perfumes: Classique is the mother, Le Male is the father, the son is Fleur du Male, Fragile is sort of like the aunt, and now here comes the daughter. She is energetic, modern, and young in attitude, and that concludes the family.

What was the initial idea this time around?

With this one, I needed to figure out how to make it smell electric. I still wanted musk, because I know musk is sensual. And sensuality is important because perfume is like a dress: You can be totally nude, but you are dressed by your perfume. [Fragrance] is very complimentary to fashion in this way—it's another story about color and packaging and often gives me ideas for my clothes. I did one dress in my couture collection in the pink from this perfume.

Is this emphasis on electricity and energy what led you to the unorthodox packaging approach you took with the box, insofar as you literally have to rip it open in order to remove the bottle?

I have always been influenced by movements—they are very important; they show who we are and how we feel and what we need. You have different ways to open things, and this is a quite punk-y way to do it, and for fragrance, that's like sacrilege! It's an attitude that says, "I do what I want."

How would you say this idea of independence is reflected in your deliberate spelling of the fragrance's name, which could suggest a certain possessiveness rather than a freedom?

The word "madame" is very bourgeois and old-fashioned. But "Ma Dame" is completely different. It's my type of woman—at the same time fragile and strong, like a tomboy that is a little androgynous in attitude so, you know, she can cut her hair if she wants. It's a cliché that women have to have long hair to seduce a man. But [cutting your hair] means something—an independence, that women don't always have to seduce a man. They can seduce a woman, if they want.

And is this character composite what led you to Agyness Deyn—in all of her short-, spiky-haired glory—as the face of the fragrance?

I met [Deyn] in 2006, the year I was celebrating the 30th anniversary of my company. I did a retrospective and she wore the first outfit at the show, which was also the first look I did that was really different from what everyone else was doing in 1976: It was a biker jacket like Marlon Brando but with a French flag on the back and studs; a long tutu but with pockets in the back, like a jeans tutu; and tennis shoes. She was ballerina and biker, so feminine and masculine. It was a mix of my sensibility, and I knew she was completely the one to represent it.

You've been somewhat of a champion of women in this way, bucking convention with your clothes and, it would appear, with your fragrances as well. Where does this sentiment come from?

I've always found a power and intelligence in women and thought it was a kind of injustice that there were things that they couldn't do when I was first starting in fashion—like women who were more clever than men weren't paid as well as men. As they became more liberated, I tried to reflect this same balance through my clothes, so I did [some looks] for two in my first collection, where men could wear skirts and women could wear trousers. Then, after the seventies, when some girls wanted to start wearing bras again—not because they were obliged but because they wanted to play, to seduce—I was doing a lot of corsets.

It's not as usual as it once was to wander into the Built by Wendy boutique in New York's Centre Market Place and find Wendy Mullin herself there, peeking out of the back room studio to chat with customers, or, every once in a while, tending the flagship shop's register. But last week, Centre Market Place was precisely where Mullin could be found, in body at least. Spirit was on the West Coast—to be exact, somewhere near the corner of Twentieth and Mission streets in San Francisco, where on June 15 Mullin will open her latest franchise in the burgeoning Built by Wendy empire. The San Fran debut comes hot on the heels of the publication of "Home Stretch," Mullin's second book in the successful Sew U sewing guide series (meanwhile, her eager-beaver students have been snapping up the patterns she's releasing through Simplicity). In another designer's hands, such a project could easily be written off as so much marketing noise, but as the girls and boys who remember stumbling upon Mullin folding pants at the flagship can attest, this designer is a big believer in doing things yourself. (Apparently, she called her brand Built by Wendy for a reason.) Here, Mullin talks to Style.com about tacos, sewing-world cred, and what she's been Netflixing lately.

When I heard you were opening a store in San Francisco, my response was pretty much, "How is it possible there's not already a Built by Wendy store in San Francisco?"

Yeah, that's a real natural constituency for me. I have a ton of hardcore customers out there, and opening up in San Francisco was something I'd wanted to do for a while. But, you know, time. Money. That stuff. The pieces finally fell into place. I'm really psyched about the location; it's a cute space and right around the corner from the place I like to go get tacos when I'm in town.

Mission tacos are the best. You should do a taco-themed opening party.

I think we've already got the party planning covered. My friend Zach is going to DJ, and then afterwards we'll head over to my other friend's bar, the Homestead. But we're keeping things in the neighborhood, so who knows, tacos could become involved.

When you walk around the neighborhood in New York, is it weird to see girls wearing clothes they've sewn from your patterns? I mean, they're yours, but they're also kind of not yours.

I love the idea that people can use the patterns as a creative space for themselves. For one thing, I'm a self-taught sewer, and I like to give people the information they need to make things themselves. And then, too—back when I was in the store all the time, I used to get a lot of feedback from my customers. They'd tell me what didn't fit right, what they were looking for and not finding, and what they wanted me to do more of. And I'd use that. So I guess to some extent I've always thought of my designs as a two-way street. I like collaborating with people. I wish I could do it more.

You worked on the merchandise for MoMA's "Sleepwalkers" show last year. How did that come about?

Doug [Aitken] is a friend of mine. The collaboration happened the way it usually does with me, which is that someone asks, and after a while, I say yes. In this case I was on board right away; it was such a cool project. We worked together on a DFA video he shot, too. One of these days I'd like to give myself some time to do costume design. But I'm not sure where that time's going to come from, exactly.

Is there another Sew U book in the works? Another store?

Not right now, no. The thing about the books is that I don't want them to be silly, you know, like Miss New York Designer and her tips for this or that. They're quite technical—technical enough that I actually got a seal of approval from the Sewing Guild of America, which is a pretty big deal in sewing world. And as for the store, well, we'll see. I've got men coming into the store asking me to do more menswear, and I've got a spring collection to design, and Eric Rohmer movies to watch…. I'll be happy just to get the San Francisco store up and running, so that someone else can take over.

Incredible as it seems, Federico Fellini and Ronald Reagan actually had something in common. Both, it turns out, were devoted readers of FMR, the exclusive Italian art magazine. And though it's not clear whether the Gipper had his own nickname for the keepsake glossy, Fellini liked to call it "the Black Pearl of the publishing world"—fitting praise, given that FMR's pages are pretty enough to frame and its writers have included the likes of Borges and Calvino. In March, the Black Pearl had a glitzy relaunch at the Met, with focus on its new columns and expansive companion Web site, www.fmronline.com. And now the pearl comes in another color, too: This month, the magazine debuts its first issue devoted to contemporary art, and to mark the occasion, the publishers are switching out FMR's iconic black cover for one in white. "It's not that the magazine will be covering what art is now, this minute," notes Marco Trevisan, FMR's point person in the U.S. "We aren't racing to report on the newest new thing. For us, the idea is to look at art from a contemporary point of view." Henceforth, subscribers will find the FMR White Edition trading places with the black one on a month-to-month basis. In the meantime, Trevisan tells Style.com about bridging the old and new, bringing back patronage, and books made out of marble.

FMR White Edition is not, as you say, a periodical about the contemporary art scene. It's not ARTnews. So what makes a magazine whose first article is about Artemisia Gentileschi contemporary at all?

Each of the issues will have a theme. For example, the monograph portion of the first issue is themed around the idea of "the Feminine Genius." The goal, for us, is to explore the development of that idea through time, from all the way back to Artemisia Gentileschi, through artists like Sonia Delaunay and Louise Nevelson, and all the way up to Gazira Babeli, who is the preeminent artist in Second Life. Also, I think it's nice to start the very first issue with this piece on Artemisia; it makes a nice connection to the black FMR.

So, for people who aren't necessarily familiar with FMR Black, the essential difference between that edition and the white one is that FMR White extends its purview up to the present moment in art.

Essentially, yes. There are other differences—the columns in the back are not the same, for example—but the strategy is always the FMR strategy of shaping pieces that are timeless. We want readers to be able to come back to an article in FMR months or years later, and still find it compelling and relevant.

It seems as though FMR has been a hotbed of activity lately—there was the relaunch of the Black edition, and the expansion of the Web site, and, as I understand it, you're inaugurating some kind of book project, too?

Yes, a book project—but not just any book. This week in Bologna we will be presenting the "Book Wonderful," as we call it. This will be a book about Michelangelo's sculptures, very limited copies, and each one will cost something like $150,000.

Um…why so much?

Well, for example, the cover of the book will be made out of the same marble, from the same quarry that Michelangelo used. The paper is very special, every one is signed by hand by the artists who worked on the books. We are selecting the buyers—the idea is to get back to this idea of patronage, as it existed in the Renaissance, and also the idea of the book as objet d'art, which was very important then as well.

A lot has changed since the Renaissance. There's the Internet, for example.

Yes, but there are also ideas that should not fade away. For the "Book Wonderful," we have been working with the very best of Italian craftsmen, and to do this is still quite meaningful in Italy. You look at the great Italian fashion houses, Valentino, Armani, for example—these are designers who came of age at a time when people understood the importance of craft, as distinct from art. That's a beautiful tradition, the bringing together of the man of ideas with the man of action. It's an old idea, but we believe its time has come again.

If you've ever considered getting a tattoo and, possibly in a moment of questionable sobriety, thought of forgoing the usual floral fare for, say, a large rendering of Dr. Phil's face on your back, it might be worth your while to flip through Aviva Yael, P. M. Chen, and David Cross' "No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever" (Grand Central Publishing) before taking the plunge. The epic book chronicles a year's worth of reporting and photographing at tattoo conventions and studios all over the country, documenting just about every motif you could possibly dream up (and some that transcend the limits of the human imagination), needled in ink—for perpetuity. #$%*ing ridiculous, indeed. Yael sat down with Style.com to discuss her adventures in body art.

What prompted you to embark on this veritable tattoo safari?

It basically started as a joke in a bar. Some friends of mine were sitting around and someone started telling us about an awful date he'd just had with a girl who had Lucky Charms cereal tattooed across her toes. It was around the time that those oversized fishnets were in—I think 2003—so she was able to poke her toes through her stockings, a vision he described as "vile."

Did you find a general consensus as to why people choose exaggeration over subtlety when it comes to tattoos?

Everyone has different reasons for getting their tattoos. People who get these crazy tattoos for the most part love them. They know what they're doing. For instance, the girl who got a lower-back piece that says in block letters, "I'M GONNA KILL YOU, RAY ROMANO," got that with her best friend. They decided to pick the worst tattoos they could imagine for each other. But it's obviously hilarious and that joke will never get old. Anyone who sees it on her for the rest of her life is going to crack up laughing, and she knows that. That's my favorite tattoo in the book.

Speaking of favorites, what were the worst and most ridiculous pieces you saw?

I feel like I'm always on a quest to find the all-time funniest, most ridiculous tattoo, but the ideas floating around out there on people's skin are endless—I wish I could see them all. Even the worst tattoos are sometimes the best. There was one girl who wouldn't let us put her in the book, but I'd say her Oprah Winfrey bench-pressing with a warm-up jacket was pretty up there.

Are there any specific shops that stand out for their fine—or not so fine—craftsmanship?

Definitely Marco and his team at Lit Fuse Tattoo in Olympia, Washington. They have a great sense of humor and they're really skilled. Then there are the famous artists who contributed, like Scott Campbell from Saved in Brooklyn—he designed the Olympic uniforms and did the Camel campaign recently. There are a few that aren't in the book who I genuinely admire, too, like Roman and Cholo from Artistic Element in Yucaipa, California.

Do you have any tattoos—or any ideas in the works for future tattoos?

No tattoos for me. I'm still too scared to commit! I hope to get one someday, but I think I need to make sure it's one I can live with forever, especially after seeing all the crazy stuff in this book. I've been thinking about that awful moon-faced, piano-playing, Sinatra-singing "Mac Tonight" guy who wears Ray-Bans. I hated him so much when I was little and I still cringe when I think about those awful McDonald's commercials—but as a tattoo I think it would be hilarious forever and sort of mean something to me.

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.