Takashi Murakami

Laura Brown is one of the funniest people working in fashion -- the Aussie told me at Karl Lagerfeld's talk in New York last night that she's like a "little koala" who "just shows up" at the Chanel offices in Paris -- and the latest manifestation of her wit appears in the December/January issue of Harper's Bazaar.

Cole Haan's latest campaign features none other than the great Maya Angelou, along with three other awesome 85-year-olds, all born in the same year as the Cole Haan brand: 1928. We're really into Maya's sassy leopard shoes. {WWD} Rihanna wore a teeny tiny cross grill between her two front teeth at last night's VMAs. How many people do you think tried to offer her a toothpick before they realized it was on purpose? {HuffPo} Is Beyoncé trying to break Rihanna's record for "Number of Different Hairstyles Possible in the Shortest Period of Time"? Yeah, she changed her hair again. {Us Weekly}

When thinking of artist/celebrity pairs to create a magazine cover, the duo of Britney Spears and Takashi Murakami is not one of the more obvious choices. But Pop's Winter 2010 cover (they're really ahead of the game) shows Britney looking Japanime envisioned by Mr. Murakami himself. (Todd Cole was behind the camera.) Since Dasha Zhukova's appointment as EIC, Pop has taken an artsy tone, its Summer 2010 cover shot by Richard Prince. The strange coincidence is that both Prince and Murakami gained major fashion world fame because of their collaborations with Louis Vuitton. Maybe Marc is consulting on these covers....

TIME Magazine loves their lists. They're already working on the 100 Most Influential People of 2009, and for the first time they're letting readers ge