I’ve never really been a puffy vest kind of girl, but after flipping through this month’s J.Crew catalog about a million times and reading about Pharrel’s Bionic vest for Moncler, I suddenly need one.

The musician’s designed a special collection for the luxury puffer brand. His vests and jackets come in black, all black and only black, including one vest in particular he’s billed as a bullet proof vest for pacifists. Inside, the jackets and vests are printed with images - mostly of nature after dark - by Japanese artist Keita Sugiura.

The range will drop in Fall 2010, no word on price points or stockists yet. But every piece uses fabric from Bionic, Pharrell’s three-year-old company that makes yarn from recycled plastic bottles.

If I’m venturing into puffer territory I’ll probably stick with something more like this, though between Pharrell and Giambattista Valli the idea of fancy down outerwear’s growing on me.

Lately we hear about pop-up shops every single day. This morning’s WWD talked of the just opened “J. Crew Special Selections” shop inside Ron Herman (which is inside Fred Segal.) While it’s nice that Ron himself picked out some pieces and is putting them next to the Margiela, Lanvin, etc. in his boutique, we really don’t see the point.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate mixing high and low. Of course we do. We just don’t understand doing a pop-up shop with merchandise that is readily available elsewhere like, you know, a J. Crew store. Others that come to mind are Citizens of Humanity (also at Ron Herman) and Alice + Olivia at Scoop. Really, are the people of Los Angeles having a hard time locating J. Crew merch or COH jeans? We highly doubt it.

Editors swooned over J.Crew’s spring/summer collection at the company’s Astor Place headquarters yesterday.

Creative Director Jenna Lyons presented a slouchy, girly, heavily layered look. There were liberty print rompers (that won’t make it into stores, even though I’d buy five), camo jackets, sequined shorts and tanks, a bunch of grandpa cardigans and one great gown all paired with brogues and what looked like Kork-Ease wedges.

There were touches of neon everywhere (even more than for fall) and chunky jewelry layered atop itself on wrists and necks, including those Miriam Haskell pieces Lyons was so excited about.

Pants-less looks made more than one appearance, with plaid ruffled high-waisted bloomers and what looked like grey knit short, short shorts. And though the clothes were fantastic, it’s the brilliant styling that made everyone want to jump in and live in J.Crew world.

That and the pigs in a blanket they were passing around.

Smile & Nod: Erin Wasson might like grunge, but prep pays the bills. She’s all smiles in J.Crew’s fall catalog. {J.Crew}

Word Up: A collection of fantastic quotes from Tom Ford, including his senate ambitions, his tailored Fruit of the Loom and the difference between a Gucci and a YSL woman. {Guardian}

Oh Boy: Penn Badgley tells Cosmo that he likes his women to dress “simply”. You know, like in “plunging v-necks” and “thigh high boots”. Sweater dresses are good, too. This editorial, however, is creepy. {Cosmopolitan}

Designer Facebook: Gucci’s launched their own social networking site, Eyeweb, to promote their new sunglasses; Frida Giannini even makes a cameo in one slideshow. There are only two models for now, but more to come, and more colors, for spring. {Grazia}

Bananas for Anna: We’ve had a crush on Anna Friel since Pushing Daisies, now she’s playing Eliza Doolittle in London’s West End. Here, some of her best looks. {ElleUK}

While everyone’s been freaking out over GmailFail, I’ve been trying to squeeze in some online Fashion Week shopping before my inbox starts buzzing again.

A big thank you to J.Crew for the arrival of this awesome three-pack of brightly colored socks that I will be heading to the store to purchase on leaving the office today. I went through a really huge socks with heels phase a few years ago and I am rather excited to bring it back next week. I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible with a few key staples which so far only included a good jacket…and now these socks. The pink, green, and yellow trio is definitely speaking to me.

This weekend will be devoted to rounding out the rest of the uniform. Why I wait until the last minute every year, I will never know. Suggestions are always welcome.

While it turns out The Daily was just stirring up smoke with those false Jean Paul Gaultier rumors - he & Hermès look forward to a long and happy life together - the French house still has major problems.

WWD reports their profits have taken a 7% dip in the first half of the year which the house claims is fine, since they plan on evening out their numbers in the second half. While it’s tempting to blame the recession, Bryanboy puts it best when he tweets, “That’s what they get for letting Heidi Montag buy their stuff all the time.”

Meanwhile, on the other end of the retail spectrum, J.Crew’s profits aren’t just staying steady, but actually rising. CEO Mickey Drexler says, “There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned recession to make you run a better business.”

J.Crew’s always been the most-luxury of the high-street brands, which might explain, why, during all of this, they’ve consistently done well. If the woman who buys only designer clothing finally needs to cut back, she’s not going to stop shopping, but she will buy her basics elsewhere. And if she was buying $200 t-shirts, J.Crew’s $88 version is a steal.

Not that they’re perfect (Madewell’s not doing so hot), but they are winning while everyone else is losing.

Now You See It: Photographer Greg Kadel shot an editorial titled Come As You Are for Australian Vogue and released an early shot to models.com. In the actual magazine, they’ve airbrushed out Abbey Lee & Cat McNeil’s nipple rings. So, the title’s kind of funny. {Frockwriter}

About That: Those Sex and the City auditions were yesterday. Here’s a sampling of the crowd looking to linger behind SJP & Co. in the film’s sequel. {Interview}

Babies’in’Fashion: Cynthia Rowley’s designing a line of baby clothes for Babies’R’Us. It’s called Hooray, launches in 2009 and she’s been “dying to do baby clothes for a long time.” Because designing bibs and diaper bags gives her something a runway doesn’t? {PRNewswire}

Better & Better & Better: As if there’ll be a moment to breathe during London Fashion Week, now you’ll have to squeeze in the National Portrait Gallery’s Twiggy exhibition. {Telegraph}

POP This: Here’s your first peek at Dasha Zhukova’s POP. Looks good so far, and love anything that pairs “Margiela with Westwood, McQueen against Watanabe’s padded extravagance,” though she should stop defending herself. {Fashionologie & Interview}

Fall, For Serious: Candy & her team at Style just released their fall trend report. We’ll avoid Party Like It’s 1983 since we just barely missed that the first time around, but fully embrace Boudoir Crossing and Biker Brigade. {Style}

Rad Rad: If you’re not yet familiar with Rad Hourani, get thee to a lookbook. The dude’s going to be major. {Jak&Jil}

Biggie, Biggie, Biggie: Just how many of these bracelets on one arm would be too many? We can’t make it past the jewelry counter at J.Crew lately. Seriously, someone is doing their job very, very well. {J.Crew}

Model Citizen: Meet Damaris Lewis. She’s from Brooklyn, she’s eighteen, she’s the face of YSL and after watching this, you’ll want to eat pizza with her. {NylonTV}

We love our wardrobes. And when we spend money on something, even if it was only ten dollars on a t-shirt, we want to keep it in the best condition possible (except, perhaps, for our Chucks and certain pairs of jeans.)

But then life happens.

We usually head to the professionals, humbled and hopeful, with our scuffed shoes or stained cardigans. It’s pricey, though, and we get excited when there’s a way to care for our more delicate pieces from the comfort of our own homes. Like this summer when J. Crew started selling a cashmere wash to keep your cashmere fresh, for only $18.

I knew exactly who I wanted to interview for my first Life With column as I soon as I got the job here at Fashionista, my old friend Elizabeth Kiester (pictured here with one of her besties, Loven.) I’ve been very blessed in my 11 (gasp!) year career in this business to be able to work with some amazingly talented and wickedly smart and funny people. Eliz pretty much tops that list. And I was lucky enough to get to work with her twice, at Jane and YM.

But it’s not because she’s my friend that I wanted you all to meet her. She truly has had one of the most interesting careers in fashion—going from magazines to trendspotter for A&F to creating collaborations with Stella at LeSportsac.

As of late last year, she is a full-fledged designer, selling her wares at her incredibly colorful store, Wanderlust, in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Yep, Cambodia.

Unfortunately, a trip to Cambodia isn’t exactly in the Fashionista budget, so I talked to Elizabeth via email about how she ended up where she is today and how a life in fashion in Siem Reap is so very different from the one she used to live in New York.

Monday, we’ll chat more about what’s selling out in her store, what she misses most about New York, where Wanderlust is going next, and how to rock 5 inch Marni pumps in a Cambodian village.

In the Trenches: Sasha and Malia are about to cause another round of skyrocketing coat sales at J. Crew - this time of the khaki trench variety. {Politico}

LVMH Making Moves? Christian Lacroix was spotted at the Givenchy show just after his own (perhaps final) presentation. Tongues are wagging that the Arnaults might just step in to save the house. {FWD}

If She Could Turn Back Time: Holy photoshopping! Britney Spears looks like it’s 1999 in these shots for Candies. We bet she wishes she could revisit that past too. {StyleWatch}

Who’s the Man? The chicest of the chic stay at the Ritz in Paris. This guy makes their loves run smoothly while they’re there. {W}

Poor Abercrombie’s been having a hell of a time with this whole recession thing.

Last winter they refused to cut prices pre-Christmas which led to devastating losses and now, they’ve announced they’re closing Ruehl. A good friend worked at Abercrombie’s Ohio headquarters while Ruehl launched and here’s why, according to her, it bombed:

“At first their product was awesome, it was so different from anything else on the market. But it didn’t catch on immediately (most new things don’t) and instead of giving it a proper chance, they caved to corporate pressure and turned it into just another A&F. If they’d just stuck to the original idea without conforming to the A&F model, it would have made it through this downturn.

They didn’t differentiate themselves from their umbrella brand and you can’t draw an older, brand new demographic with the same merchandise they wore in high school. You can’t use sex to sell to a 29-year-old woman like you do a 17-year-old. Like look at Madewell. J.Crew’s offshoot does so well because it’s completely different from J.Crew - an original idea as opposed to a recycled version of the same thing.

Not to mention, no one even knew what Ruehl was.”

So there you have it. If you wanted to pay extra for your moose-embossed polo you should probably go now, all twenty-nine stores will be closed by the end of the year.

So this weekend Karl Lagerfeld took a “dig” at Heidi Klum, his second of the year.

In February he said, “Heidi is no runway model. She is simply too heavy and has too big a bust. And she always grins so stupidly. That is not avant-garde - that is commercial!” and now he claims not to know who she is, “I don’t know Heidi Klum. She was never known in France. Claudia Schiffer also doesn’t know who she is.”

First, you can’t break down someone’s body and then say you don’t know they exist. Second, which high fashion designer is more commercial than Karl Lagerfeld? Third, you don’t make money when Claudia Schiffer knows who you are, you make it when Middle America knows your name (though we don’t believe for a second that Schiffer’s never heard of Klum). Fourth, Lagerfeld makes gorgeous, brilliant clothes, but avant-garde at this stage? Non.

Most frustrating of all is the unfortunate truth that models don’t make major money walking Balenciaga or doing editorials for Purple, but from major beauty contracts, from Victoria’s Secret or J.Crew catalogs and eventually, from becoming a brand.

It’s kind of like how designers don’t make money by designing the most extreme avant-garde clothes, like say Gareth Pugh or Olivier Theyskens, but by hooking themselves up to a major brand, like say Fendi or Chanel and putting their name on overpriced teddy bears.

W Magazine hosted a conference on luxury this morning - what’s going on with it, who’s hurting, who’s winning, when will it come back?

They conducted a series of polls with their readers, dubbed “Fashion Passionates,” and compared them to the more generally affluent, as in still-rich people who don’t devote their extra money to Givenchy and McQueen.

What’d they learn? This is the first time in recorded history that the luxury market has been hit harder than retail in general. Aspirational customers (those who save up for that one big purchase or consistently live beyond their means) are totally gone and not likely to return anytime soon. Even the best luxury customers are spending on average 50% less.

Before and after I quizzed Jenna on her life, trying to grasp just how she does so much in so few hours, we wandered through J.Crew’s massive offices.

Between men’s, women’s, kids, Madewell, the catalog, the website and CEO Mickey Drexler’s daily bike ride through the office - there’s a lot going on.

The design studio has its own separate floor on which there’s a color library and separate sections for every team which means the walls are filled with inspiration in the form of editorials, fabric swatches, vintage clothes and jewels, favorite models, favorite seasons, pictures of kids, of parties, of houses.

Her office, a brightly lit corner full of magazines - including some Vogues from the 70s that I’m pretty sure I saw in the Met earlier in the week - samples, suitcases and furry pillows, is the center of the design action with people coming and going to discuss all things J.Crew.

After the jump, pictures, history and her favorites.

I spent Monday afternoon with Jenna Lyons, the Creative Director of J.Crew and pretty much the most dynamic person I have ever met.

First of all, J.Crew is huge. Their office takes up two floors, each the size of a city block and includes everything from photo studios to mock-up stores to color libraries to faux store windows to design to merchandising to catalog to Crewcuts to Madewell - seriously, overwhelmingly big.

In two hours, we toured the building and met the head designer’s various department teams: denim, kids, shoes, bags, jewelry, graphic tees, etc. I tried to grill Jenna on her day to day life but there’s just too damn much.

I naively assumed that when one lands in a top position at a major company, one signs off on other people’s creative decisions and orchestrates everything from above instead of minutely contributing to every single facet of the business. But no, whether it’s deciding what color to paint the staircase in the East Hampton store, which chairs to put in the renovated Prince Street location, sourcing wooden hands on which to display gloves come fall, casting catalog models, deciding how to sell colored pencils at Crewcuts, how one collaborates with a man who makes shirts out of sugar cane, or recruiting artists to work with, Jenna Lyons is deeply, deeply, deeply involved.

Here, we talk collaborations, models and vintage jewels. Monday we’ll talk personal history, architectural meetings and Mickey Drexler’s bike.

Ladies, it’s time to summon that inner model that lives within us all.

Groovy J. Crew spinoff Madewell is holding an open casting at their Soho store this Saturday from 2-6 pm.

They’re looking for girls with fab style to shoot for the My Madwell section of their website where you’ll mix in Madewell pieces with your personal faves.

You’ll be snapped by their photog and get a chance to chat up their model caster and head stylist. Just promise not to forget about us little people if you make it big.

“I don’t object to the fact that Mrs. Obama is wearing J. Crew to whatever because the diversity of America is what makes this country great. But there are a lot of great designers out there…You don’t go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater.” — Oscar De La Renta whining in WWD because the First Lady doesn’t wear his clothes.

Even though J.Crew’s had plenty of well-known models in their catalogs (Lauren Hutton, Cintia, Anouck, and Mallory from the Real World Paris, if you’re into fun facts, they’ve never signed just one face to front the print shopper from first page to last - until now.

Fashion Week Daily reports that Liya Kebede, Ethiopian mother of two and face of St. John for Spring 09, has been signed to model the April J.Crew catalog all by herself, which is sure to bring some fashion-centric attention to the brand that’s just come off so much press from Michelle Obama’s support of the office-wear staple.

But more pressing: Does this make the J.Crew catalog the new barometer of a model’s success?