Lutz & Patmos gets all the cool girls.

They might make little more than sweaters, but they do manage to corral the most stylish women into guest designing those fancy sweaters.

From Kirsten Dunst to Jane Birkin to Sofia Coppola (though who hasn’t she collaborated with?) - their Fashion Week presentations are just as fun for the clothes as they are for the sightings and this one might beat it: Natalia Vodianova’s their next guest.

As of February, Natalia also designs lingerie for Etam (she’s their brand ambassador, too), which means she’s got you covered from the waist up.

“I just designed a low-cut jersey in boring colors like taupe and gray or faded blue.” - Jane Birkin, on the design process for her Lutz & Patmos capsule, in WWD.

This might be the first interesting thing we’ve read about the recession since it started to take over the country’s news flow:

Some design companies, like Lutz & Patmos, have started hiring factors - people who assess boutiques’ credit worthiness so that designers can decide whether they’re willing to accept an order from a particular vendor in order to avoid last-minute order cancellations, a rising problem in the current economic state. These factors will also act as sort of collections agencies, to make sure that retail buyers pay their bills to designers on time.

So, good news: Higher job demand for people who want to be factors, and better order security for designers.

Bad news: It sounds like it’s going to be tough to get cool, smaller designers into your boutique - especially if you’re a cool, small boutique.

We hope you can take an extra long lunch break today.

Start at the bottom on Walker Street for Proenza Schouler Fall 08 samples starting at $85. From there, swing by the Temperley sale on Broome and grab this season’s merchandise for 60% below retail. Don’t forget to make a pit stop at the Ksubi store where even their latest shipment is 40% off.

Then you can hop in a cab to the West Village and grab a handful of severely marked down Rag & Bone for both you and any deserving guy in your life, or the other way around if you’re a boy reading this. Maybe pop your head into Scoop - since they’ve marked down their sale racks - on your way to the Lutz & Patmos sample sale where you’ll snag cashmere for 80% off.

Jump on the subway and head uptown because Bergdorf Goodman just marked their designer collections down 75% in store.

By the end you might have one of everything for the retail price of a single Lutz sweater.

Or you might just be exhausted.

Remember when Lutz & Patmos decided they wanted their favorite train conductor to design a sweater?

Well, here it finally is.

It looks cozy, though terribly unflattering, which makes sense if you drive a train. You probably want to be comfortable and don’t really care about your outfit since people generally only see your face.

Train conductor Chris looks like a really nice guy and has a pretty good eye for someone without an ounce of design training or experience, but even though we don’t know him personally, he doesn’t seem like the type, and ok, we definitely aren’t the type, to advocate spending $495 on a 70% cashmere sweater.

However, if you think it’s worth it, you can buy it on Barneys or on Lutz & Patmos’ new shopping site.

We somehow missed the latest Lutz & Patmos news.

The sweater label best known for its rotating guest designers (Kirsten Dunst, Jane Birkin), has teamed up with West Elm for a Holiday capsule collection of interiors.

But yesterday, while shopping for beds, we fell in love with this chunky knit blanket. It’s super soft, warm, the perfect shade of grey and, at $90, costs significantly less than the label’s scarves and sweaters, (which we think is strange since it’s made of significantly more fabric).

There are pillows and other patterned knits, too, though we’re obsessed with the cable knit. In fact, we’re plotting ways to wear it outside, whether as an obscenely oversized scarf or awkwardly belted sweater dress.

Thoughts?

No one can stop talking about how bad the retail outlook is. Everyone’s worried that no one will buy everything up this holiday season, and already there are reports that buyers are putting in much smaller orders for Spring 09 as compared to past seasons. So this fact might sounds strange: Online shopping is up. In fact, overall, it’s up 12% over last year.

WWD attributes this to consumers saying they can find better deals online, can do more comparison shopping, and that the price of gas has informed how much/far they’re willing to go for a party dress. Indeed, one could even attribute designers suddenly offering up previously unavailable e-commerce opportunities to their customers (Lutz & Patmos just launched a shopping component to their site, as well as Pucci, and Net-a-Porter continues to score site-exclusives from designers like Preen and Richard Nicoll) as an accommodation to this trend.

But we have another, not at all scientific theory to propose: Shame shopping.

I swung downtown in between Max Azria and Vivienne Tam, both at the tents, because Lutz & Patmos promised me Jane Birkin and I’d go anywhere to meet Jane Birkin.

Instead, I got sweaters. Surprise!

They did mix up the sweater selection though. Instead of all muted chunky knits like last season, they showed a lighter weight selection - which makes sense since sweaters for spring can only really be one way.

There was a lot of gold, a lot of sparkle, and a surprising amount of black. There were knit boy shorts, knit dresses, knit head gear, and, of course, knit sweaters!

I’m a bit of a cardigan-a-holic so I did kind of want it all, except for the sparkles.

But really, it just made me want to crawl in bed with a good book. Though I suppose that could just be fashion week in general.

Lutz & Patmos’ smaller, eco-friendly line, Leroy & Perry, is returning for its second season for this Fall - and what kind of friends would we be if we didn’t let you in on the sneak peek?

The collection’s small, just like the very first one Tina (Lutz) and Marcia (Patmos) designed for this Spring. We don’t know how we feel about the mustard cape (click through) but we’ve already bookmarked the little vest at left to pair with a loose tee, tiny shorts and strappy sandals for October.

The line began with a conversation between Lutz & Patmos and Barneys - Barneys lamented that they could never find any good sweaters to sell, so Tina and Marcia spawned Leroy & Perry (named after the streets they each lived on when they first moved to New York) for Barneys Green. Most of the clothes are eco-friendly, and 1% of all proceeds go to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

Each piece retails for under $300, which we could live with - though you can buy the Zampa Tunic from Spring on sale for $169 right now…

Lutz & Patmos loves guest designers, though they’re usually of Fabien/Carine /Sofia type.

So we were super surprised and pleased this morning when WWD reported that the sweater lovers new guest designer is an Amtrak conductor, Chris Waugh.

Apparently, Conductor Chris and Tina Lutz became fast fashion friends on the train after Lutz’ repeated trips home to Rhode Island, eventually leading to him designing his own sweater for L&P, called the Shoreliner, after his train line. (The only available picture of it online was from the WWD article, modeled by Conductor Chris’ daughter, Brooke, at left and tiny.)

At first, we were like, “What experience does he have designing clothes?” And then were we were like, “Oh yeah. Just as much as Kirsten Dunst, really.”

Kirsten Dunst was supposed to be the next collaborator with cashmere line Lutz + Patmos, but we’ve gotten word of another one:

Richard Meier.

The famed architect will also launch a capsule collection for Lutz + Patmos this year, though his selection will be considerably smaller than Kirsten’s line - just one item.

It’s a very underwhelming belted gray cardigan, with a deep V-neck and a charity tie -

$10 from every sweater goes to Architecture for Humanity, an urban foundation that promotes better buildings for better lives (a principle that we feel also applies to fashion, but more on that thesis later).

The sweaters go on sale this summer, in the U.S. and also in Paris, where they can be found at the coolest store ever, Colette.

Click through if you’d like to see a very luxurious but very boring sweater designed by Mr. Meier.

So we checked out the Lutz & Patmos fall collection at the New Museum’s Sky Room last night.

The sights were amazing - unobstructed views of the city, and Carine Roitfeld in the flesh.

But the clothes… We felt the sweaters were cute and wearable. But… A show? For sweaters? One after the other like that? And all pretty plain?

So we thought, “Oh! They must be super soft!” But at first touch, we knew, they were somewhere between wool and Banana Republic cashmere. Hmm…

We’re always fans of stuff to throw on to go to the movies on a cold, Monday night but not when it retails in the high hundreds of dollars.

We don’t think Kirsten Dunst having designed some of the pieces suddenly makes the collection so noteworthy - so what do you guys think? Adorable covers? Or over-hyped yarn?

[On a side note, the presentation did include one interesting detail - the use of mannequins instead of models, something we’ve been wondering about since we had the awkward experience of touching the hem of a dress while the model stared back at us at a previous presentation…]

Well now that Chloe Sevigny and Natalie Portman have their own clothing projects, it’s about time Kirsten gets in the game, isn’t it?

And so, the actress will debut her latest line - a collaboration with the cashmere giants Lutz + Patmos - on Sunday, February 3, at the New Museum. DJ Michel Gaubert, who does all the music for Karl Lagerfeld, will helm the decks.

Although this marks Kirsten’s first clothing foray, it isn’t the first time Lutz + Patmos has been to Hollywood. Their past guest “designers” include Liv Tyler and Julianne Moore, plus one collection with Carine Roitfeld at the drawing board.

Lutz + Patmos also did a collaboration with Uniqlo two years ago, but we don’t think Kirsten will follow in their footsteps with that one…

New venues always attract old crowds, and the New Museum on the Bowery is no exception:

Following its star-crammed opening hosted by Calvin Klein (and sealed with Martha Stewart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ashley Olsen), the museum hosts a fete next week for Banana Republic and their favorite fashion editors.

Then it’s time for FORM to showcase their latest collection in the museum’s Skybox, which provides an insane view of the city skyscape, as seen from downtown.

And finally?

Lutz + Patmos will host their Fall ‘08 cashmere presentation, which usually lures Carine Roitfeld as well as various celluloid darlings like Liv Tyler and Julianne Moore.

This time around, another starlet is slated to attend, but for once, we can’t tell.

Can you?