Rachel Bilson’s landed her own InStyle column in what might be the most genius starlet-meets-fashion move we’ve heard in a long, long time.

Since The OC, Rachel’s wandered in and out of a couple of movies and launched a line with DKNY, but it’s her style that keeps her on everyone’s radar.

The magazine’s managing editor, Ariel Foxman, said that most women answer, “Rachel Bilson,” when asked whose style they admire and so they recruited the California girl to write a page or two in the magazine in which she discusses her favorite trends and what she wants to buy for the month. She’ll also answer readers’ style questions.

Rachel tells WWD, “I am not planning on quitting my day job to be a full-time fashion editor, although I am really enjoying it and it intrigues me very much.”

We’re not sure what her day job is, but we think she’d make a kind of awesome fashion editor.

The next logical step from Ray-Ban, via WWD this morning:

Following the success of the Wayfarers revival (so successful we’re sick of them), Ray-Ban’s reintroducing another oldie/goodie from their archive, the Clubmasters, from the golden year of 1986, already recently spotted on the likes of Agyness and Rachel Bilson.

The style will get six new bright colors added to its repertoire (in addition to classic black and tortoise), launching at a small concert at the Bowery Ballroom on December 9th.

Each pair will retail for $129. But if you can’t wait (and feel like this season’s sales need to be respected), you could throw a pair onto your Amazon holiday order for $99 - that is, of course, if you won’t want to flick them off people’s faces by New Year’s.

Ok, clearly we don’t actually think that. Anyway…

One for all you photo freaks out there:

Does the shot of Marion Cotillard on the Eiffel Tower shot by Peter Lindbergh (thanks, WWD) remind anyone else of the divine Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn on the Eiffel Tower shot by Erwin Blumenfeld in 1939?

Even though Lisa makes it look like a ferris wheel and Marion like a death trap, we think so.

Class discussion, please.

PS Just for fun, I’ve added two photos of another model standing precariously on another building that one of my old professors just passed along to me. Bonus points if you can name both the model and photographer.

So, I really did go to Vermont this weekend, and I really did try to keep an eye out for Karl even though I was really on the wrong side of the state. But guess what? Karl’s not the only one moving his off-hours fun site to the green mountains -

On Friday, I stopped by Parker Pie, the only pizzeria for many miles in West Glover, VT (pop. couldn’t be more than 600). Just as soon as I walked in, someone exclaimed, “YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHO WAS JUST HERE!”

Who?

“Tyra Banks! She sat in the back with some guy and had a pizza.”

And there you have it. The apocalypse.

Milla Jovovich’s brood is the latest to pose with fancy luggage.

According to WWD, the designer’s family’s been shot on Mulholland Dr. lounging in front of her car, surrounded by the newest Samsonite Black Label bags.

The ads will debut just in time to compete with probably a better known family hawking a better known brand - the Coppolas for Louis Vuitton.

Our family vacations aren’t quite as calm or as elegant as the ads portray.

But maybe it’s because we don’t spend more on our luggage than on the vacation itself.

“As a destination for fashion insiders and the people who wish to dress like them, this may be the most influential place in retail at the moment,” wrote Eric Wilson of Opening Ceremony in The New York Times this morning.

Really?

We think it’s more like this: Opening Ceremony has only become well known, outside the fashion clique, by making brands like Topshop and Target accessible to New Yorkers.

But as far as directly influencing the fashion industry, and even the retail industry, our immediate thought was, “What about Barneys?” Isn’t Barneys the store powerful enough to propel unknown kids to style icon status, like Proenza? Isn’t Barneys to blame for the national influx of “Goyard” stamped canvas bags? How many stores can claim a Creative Director with an internationally recognized face, like Simon Doonan?

Even if you don’t agree that Barneys is the “most influential store” out there, it seems like quite a stretch to bestow the honor upon Opening Ceremony - a store that is apparently now taking notes from Target with their new celebrity clothing line.

While we usually love most of their clothes, nothing about the store appears revolutionary - not to mention that our readers repeatedly express their disappointment with Opening Ceremony in our comments section.

“Most Influential” is a pretty hefty title; on which store would you bestow the label?

Does anyone else think it’s funny that both The OC and Gossip Girl aired episodes centering around a Cotillion?

We realize both shows were created by the same guy, Josh Schwartz.

Even still, such a random plot coincidence (who goes to a Debutante ball outside of the South? Unless you’re like at the Crillion?) caught us off guard.

Not only that, but it was difficult to embrace the cotillion fashion - that seemed a lot like the “Masked Ball” fashion, but without the great makeup - woven throughout the episode. Who wants to see Blair Waldorf dressed up like the Bush twins?

But back to the Cotillion coincidence - surely there’s something else that can happen in a Josh Schwartz show?

Or maybe the next thing you know, Serena’s going to shoot Chuck in order to save Nate’s life, and that’s when we’ll know for sure that Gossip Girl may not be the best use of our time.

Hopefully it won’t happen.

They already have Top Model and Gossip Girl -

Now The CW is adding one more fashion program, with help from Isaac Mizrahi.

The Hollywood Reporter tells today that Mizrahi will produce a fictional show called “The Collection,” based on Isaac’s real experience in the style world.

Set to air next year, the series could rival Ugly Betty in terms of it’s Devil-Wears-Miu-Miu appeal, but there’s no word yet on whether Isaac will also play a role on screen.

The series is written by Elisa Bell, whose last project, Little Black Book, starred Brittany Murphy - another fashion icon from the ’90s!

We keep meaning to post our photos of the Claire Tough show, not because they’re newsworthy but out of sheer admiration.

We were told that the recent St. Martin’s grad would put on quite a show, and so we raced - literally, in Converse sneakers and a Puma tennis dress - to her catwalk, almost too late.

Squeezing into the front row with five seconds to spare, we were treated to Iekeleine out first on the runway (yay!) followed by the darling Patricia Schmid, and then the pure bliss of a sweater dress collection with Basquiat prints woven - not silk screened or even embroidered, but actually woven - into the wool and cotton knits. There was also some puff paint.

Instead of accessories, Claire made bags and hats out of foam core that featured the New York skyline. They were perfect, in a ’90s Fresh Prince sort of way, and reminded us of another fearless designer:

Jeremy Scott, whose latex ice cream dress and infamous food fight print kept editors and party babes giggling for days.

Claire, welcome to the Scene. Stay for a while.

About ten years ago, girls in boarding school stole their mother’s Louis Vuitton pochettes, which were kept inside larger handbags to hold makeup, keys, and other travel necessities. The girls transformed the bags into actual purses, often linking a Vuitton keychain into the strap to make it longer and easier to carry.

The new accessories were toted to New York on school break, Patricia Field picked up the trend for Carrie Bradshaw, and now the pochette is such a staple purse, it’s price has jumped about a hundred dollars.

Meanwhile, Dior Parfum has a new product that might take over the pochette’s reign as a junior status bag.

Their latest makeup case comes stuffed with various perfumes, but looks like an extension of their famous ‘05 couture collection, made famous when Kate Moss wore its nude colored corset to the CFDA Awards. (And yes, fashion junkies, Dior’s Spring ‘06 collection had the same lingerie feel as its couture mothership, so the bag could be inspired by that, too).

Anyway, we’ve spotted the Dior makeup pouch clutched by a few prep school girls, and we wonder: is this a 10th grade fad, or the beginning of a new tide…

Have nameplate necklaces been replaced… by mud flap girls?

FabSugar has a feature today about the jewels, and we admit, we’ve been seeing them a lot lately. The charms capture the same trashy, supposedly cool vibe as their nameplate predecessor, but we like them even less.

Why?

Well, at least the nameplate necklace represented you - can anyone except for Dina Lohan claim that their identity, essence, or spirit is a mud flap girl? Ew!

Maybe we’re missing something - a vague strain of women’s liberation, reclaiming your inner sex symbol, whatever - but we don’t get it.

Our favorite alternatives:

The Alex and Chloe “Kate” necklace, in which the girl is beautiful but upright, and hopefully walking away from the mud flap girls. It’s $60.

Meanwhile, the “Angry” and “Calm” necklaces from I Am Accessories start at $38.

Bonus: The company gives its proceeds to charity.

Double Bonus: You won’t be copying Sarah Jessica Parker. Which is, of course, a style sin of the highest rank.

FabSugar extols the gorgeous new Versace ads, and we agree, they’re super.

But don’t they remind you of something?

Something like Burberry’s Spring ‘07 campaign, which also stars Kate Moss in a cropped British mini-dress and some fellow supermodels as her backup dancers?

Have a look and let us know if it makes you hungry for some signature plaid…

And if you think Versace’s bid to go beyond their glamazon image and into more refined territory is working.

At a stylist’s apartment this weekend, I spied a suspiciously cute sweater dress - black, slightly sheer, and shaped like the torso of a rock star.

“Did Stella McCartney have a sample sale?” I asked.

When her face turned red, I thought it meant, “Yes, and I didn’t tell you because secretly, I haven’t forgiven you for that one time in London.”

Instead, she confessed something different.

“It’s not Stella,” she said, “It’s Strawberry. I don’t know what ever compelled me to go in there, but now it’s like my new Forever 21 - only even cheaper and less crowded. I’m obsessed.”

I heard the same story from three other girls last week.

Tell me you’ve heard it too?

Pop Sugar’s photos of Zac Posen in LA inspired a new question: Is Zac taking over where Tom Ford left off?

The designer hit Hollywood to corral some of the same faces once cultivated by Ford (Demi Moore and Anjelica Huston among them) during LA Fashion Week, and sheathed Gwyneth Paltrow in one of his dresses during the Academy Awards - Tom also dressed Gwyneth for big events. Meanwhile, Carine Roitfeld was an early Zac supporter and an early Tom champion - her Gucci styling helped catapult the brand in the ’90s.

Also, Tom and Zac both have affinities for architecture: It was Tom’s first major in college, and Zac’s inspiration for various pieces, including a finale dress for spring that looked like it was made of latticework.

But what really made us make the comparison? We won’t lie - it was the identical golden brown tan. Michael Kors, please take notes.

Slate has a long and windy article about American Apparel today, exploring their global expansion and wondering if it’s the millennial version of Gap.

We don’t love American Apparel’s sexist, greasy founder, but we remember last year in Mexico City, when we went to AA with the Heatherette crew and saw hordes of Mexican kids styling their own block colored t-shirts and leggings, as if they were in Williamsburg.

We also noticed that AA is taking away the Gap’s old shopper - hip people too busy living their lives to obsess about clothes, and everyone else who wants to look like them.

We think this is why they’re getting those shoppers…

1. American Apparel ads are anti-star. Pete Wentz will never do their campaign. AA photos feature real kids doing real things (though some of those things aren’t safe for work). AA understands a world where everyone can be sort-of famous (thank you, MySpace), and that’s interesting.

2. American Apparel has no logos - unless the logo has a Double C and costs over $500, it’s easy to understand why kids don’t want to wear one.

3. American Apparel is finally listening to shoppers. Check out their new range of ads, with scruffy cute kids wearing tons of clothes and posing in Rated G positions! Amazing.

Now all AA needs to do is prove their factories and stores are worker-friendly - something hotly debated in the fashion industry - and they might be ready for a denim triumph…

(PS - extra credit if you can name more than two models in this vintage Gap ad from the ’90s…)

We don’t really think John Galliano is the new Nicole Richie.

We’re just in love with the photo he demanded be included in his press pictures for his new John Galliano perfume, which is in the works thanks to a new licensing deal with Selective Beauty.

It’s just so over-the-top fabulous, so extraordinarily camp, that it reminds us very much of a similar image:

Nicole Richie’s book cover for The Truth About Diamonds - complete with matching hair style.

If this is the press photo, imagine the scent.

Marimekko has always been beloved - I still remember my kitty cat bedspread, my cars and trucks pillowcases, and my blue dotted wallpaper from childhood. But lately it seems the brand is more style conscious - Marimekko dresses are at Anthropologie (and are cute); Marimekko flowers are painted on Soho boutique windows; Marimekko prints are maybe mimeographed by Oscar de la Renta for his Spring collection.

I imagine soon, kids will color the flowers onto their Converse sneakers with Sharpies.

The print sweep reminds me of 2003, when Murakami’s prints hit the Louis Vuitton bags for spring and suddenly everyone wanted a little smiley flower, stuck somewhere in their world. There were Murakami soccer balls and Murakami comic books. Rockefeller Center exploded with Murakami balloons. I still have smiley flowers pasted to my laptop, a concession for the handbag I couldn’t afford.

And today I find this: Marimekko mouses (mice?) on sale in Japan. The invasion…

Also, an amendment: Last week, I called poetry “prose,” and other mutilations in the post about Supermodel and Beowulf. The story has been vetted, so you can read it again and then order the book on Amazon, before Oprah/ Starbucks/ Dreamworks gets to it…

Early this year, Fashionista got a book in the mail. It hat a hot pink cover and a pop perfect title: Supermodel. The book was an epic poem.

It starts off with a beautiful girl clinging to a tree in a tsunami, but skids far away from the actual life of Petra Nemcova from there. This girl also survives Columbine. This girl also saves whales.

The myth of this perfect woman, who walks Marc Jacobs shows before walking through fire, was intriguing. The problem? The book is interrupted, couplet by couplet, with found text on the internet. Porn star names. Handbag sales. Driving directions. A Google transcript interrupting the poetry.

Confused, frustrated, and also really interested, we hunted down the poem’s author, David Breskin, to discuss epics, fashions, and what happens to pretty girls in trouble.