“It’s very casual with the whole family and a few friends like Jason Wu, BJ Blum, and the gallery owner John McWinnie. Typically we sit down post swim, so the dress code is bathing suits under a light summer dress like Tracy Feith or Philip Lim. We decorate the table with a mix of roses, hydrangeas, and irises picked from the garden. The table is dressed with a large hand-embroidered tablecloth inherited from my grandmother, a mix of white French linen napkins, and vintage plates found at a local antiques fair. We pull up a wood bench with big cushions to squeeze in more people and protect ourselves from the sun with large parasols and straw hats from Anne Moore. The meal is a colorful, flavorful mix from local farms and purveyors such as Round Swamp Farm for delicious salads and homemade raspberry pie, Lucy’s Whey for cheese, Iacono farm for organic, free-range chicken, and pick-yourself strawberries from the farm down the road.” —Olivia Chantecaille to Vogue on her “casual” holiday weekend lunch. We’re sticking to burgers and dogs on the grill, thank you very much.

“Recently, however, it has become clear that Paris fashion is less the creative hub of the industry than an isolated universe whose weakness can be sensed even by children. Sometime in the last decade, the industry discovered that fashion was a terrific means to an end — so long as the end was anything but a useful new fashion. It could attract investors, sweeten a hotel deal in Dubai and serve as a communications tool.” Cathy Horyn in one of her surly NY Times reviews of the men’s shows.

“The collection is really for the kind of girls we like. When creating the collection we were thinking of girls like Carré Otis, Debbie Harry; a real sexy tomboy girl who looks good without trying.” —Justin Timberlake, who very obviously has a “type”, to Vogue UK on his latest William Rast collection, newly launched at Selfridges

“I call it my all-American collection. It’s sort of an apology for being such a [jerk]. I was quoted in an interview saying American tourists were ruining the Paris landscape with their fanny packs and their man bags, so this collection has leather jackets that have arms that zip off and the jacket becomes a bag.” —Rick Owens on his AW09 Men’s collection.

“I told my agent, ‘I want to do anything to do with fashion. I’m amazed how fast it [the show] is, in two minutes it’s over.” - Bradley Cooper to WWD from the front row at Louis Vuitton. We have the Valentino movie to thank for our obsession’s new found obsession. That movie just keeps on giving.

“I can try the clothes on myself.…The feeling, the comfort and the pleasure of wearing some pieces, for the feeling that it gives to you, it’s very important. Even when something is too small for me, I put it on anyway just to touch the fabric.” —Dries Van Noten in WWD on the best part of designing men’s versus women’s wear. (Though we don’t believe he can resist trying on his spectacular women’s clothes.)

“NYC Prep is boot camp in Prada shoes.” — The New York Times reviews Gossip Girl’s wannabe reality counterpart, Bravo’s NYC Prep.

“Don’t tell anyone, because I’m not allowed to do this, but we absolutely are going to have a show in mid-July, during Fashion Week - and it won’t be a funeral: it’ll be a fightback…I can’t stand the idea that people think I am to blame, but to a certain extent I am paying for not having done what everyone else did, with their logos and It-bags. I never went down that route.”” —Christian Lacroix to The Telegraph.

“In many ways, the first lady has made people see — really see — black women for the first time. For example, when a black model appeared on the May cover of Vogue, news articles credited the ‘Obama effect,’ ignoring the concerted lobbying by fashion industry activists that began long before Barack Obama was even a presidential contender…Enthusiasm over glossy-magazine beauty as defined by a darker-skinned black woman has to be seen against the backdrop of history, when black women’s appearance was used as a tool of oppression. High culture rhapsodized in love sonnets about ivory complexions, flaxen hair and ruby lips. And today, black women still mostly surface as sidebars in beauty stories.” Robin Givhan in her interesting story from today’s Washington Post on Michelle Obama’s cultural role, and her real and fictional predecessors.

“In contrast to Alex Shulman’s letter to the industry, I have very rarely experienced situations in which the samples are too small for the models (once or twice, mostly things with corsets) but have lost count of the number of times I have had to send a tailor to a celebrity’s house to take in a sample I have lent them…Sample sizes got tiny about the same time celebrity magazines started to multiply like those weird mushrooms that grow under the trees that dogs like. Up to that point there just were not that many ‘red carpet’ opportunities that it was worth schlepping samples around for…Whilst it is admirable that she [Shulman] has such strong feelings, it puts the fashion houses in a very difficult position as the value of celebrity coverage, particularly to beauty sales, is so high there is little they can do to back away from lending to x-ray thin celebrities.” Interesting excerpts and opinions on the sample size debate from an anonymous insider publicist on the LibertyLondonGirl blog

“I’m coming back to Lara [Stone] because she has these fantastic breasts. A lot of designers don’t use her because she is too big for them. For me, I want to celebrate Lara. I’m like, ‘Put her in the tightest dress and get her down there.’…The fact that she comes across as awkward is a lot sexier to me. She’s about as sexy as it gets.” —Stella McCartney to artist Chantal Joffe in Interview.

“Okay, off ze top of mein head—a yellow Adrienne Landau printed chinchilla rex rabbit newsboy hat, worn mit ein Cynthia Steffe blue-violet velvet cadet jacket over a Cavalli back-belted chunky oatmeal sweater vest on top of a Cacharel gala shirt in silver, matched mit John Varvatos stretchtwill-brocade sailor pants over Stella McCartney patent snakeskin monk shoes offset by Costume National elbow-length leather gloves, und to accessorize, maybe a rudraksha-bead twenty-two-karat white-gold Neil Lane Infinity Pendant. Simple. Timeless. Classic.” Bruno on his definition of “creative black tie” to GQ. Sorry, we’re kind of obsessed today.

“Thing is, people look much better naked. They’re all the same colour and they can’t screw up. You see someone at the gym and they look great. Then they put on their clothes.” Tom Ford to the Times UK, where he also claims to hate talking about sex.

“Beth Ditto is a fat lesbian. She’s also a fashion “icon”. Hilarious, isn’t it? I love fashion people, I really do. They’re so… how do I put this? Stupid? Yes, that’s it. They’re so stupid. Here’s what happened: stung by criticism of their unhealthy obsession with rexy supermodels, they hit back by lionising a pathologically exhibitionist 16 stone woman from Arkansas. Clever, huh? That’ll get the feminazis off their case. How can anyone say they only promote thin women when they are so enamoured of a porker like her?” Alex Bilmes, Features Director of British GQ, causing quite the stir on their blog

“I, for one, am over the mania for the high, high heel. Too many career women look like a herd of fashion beasts, aping one another in impractical shoes.” —Andre Leon Talley on the death of the towering heel.

“Gaga called me and said she wanted to be in a wheel chair. She wanted me to design it and not the prop department. I took it upon myself to drive to East L.A. and exchange the wheels for some low rider ones. I ordered some Gucci fabric and handed it over to my genius friend/designer Michael Schmidt so he could embellish it with Swarovski crystals. Originally, we made a metal logo that read “Gaga” on the wheels, but she disliked the font and we ended up exchanging it for the Chanel logo.” Lady Gaga’s stylist B. Akerlund on the wheel chair in the creepily awesome “Paparazzi” video, Anthem via Jezebel

“It’s just the best duffel bag ever. To actually have it be the Louis monogram in camouflauge. That works internationally. No matter where you go, that gets respect. A five-year-old could see this bag and think it’s cool.” —Kanye West waxing poetic on his Louis Vuitton Monogramouflage Keepall for men.Style.com .

“What is important to me is information (in the journalistic sense of relating news.) Through my collections, other product projects and through my graphic work, or by collaborating with artists and photographers, I like to tell a story. Without news, nothing is alive. The final result of everything must say something. Information deepens the work. So, if anything, I am maybe more of a journalist than an artist!” Rei Kawakubo to the International Herald Tribune in an article celebrating Commes des Garcons’ 40th Anniversary

“This is not a fact until you officially read it somewhere else but rumour has it that Karl Lagerfeld will not renew his contract at Chanel and that Albert [sic] Elbaz will take his place and Olivier Theyskens will take Albert’s place at Lanvin. Both choices make perfect sense to me…Nothing is engraved in cement, these are still just rumours you will have to wait and see.” —Diane Pernet from A Shaded View of Fashion.

“And she pays her bills doing print work, as a model, and, you know, she’s lucky to be able to do that—even though she fuckin’ hates the business, we both hate it. It makes the music industry and the film industry and every industry look like a walk in the park.” —Michael Pitt on fiancée Jamie Bochert in the NY Observer to which we question his Bryant Park presence.