The cover of the "American Fashion Cookbook: 100 Designer's Best Recipes," published by Assouline in conjunction with the CFDA, shows illustrations of two chicly dressed and very slender women. One is holding a glass of wine; the other, a platter of fish. Neither is eating or drinking. Nor do their reedy figures and model-esque poses suggest an air of hunger or appetite.

That message doesn't bode well for a book that is ostensibly about the ingestion of food. So I was ready to be disappointed when I cooked a meal using its recipes.

Emma Willis is London's first lady of men's shirts. Make that the only lady of men's shirts.

It is not every day WWD has occasion to interview an astronaut. Buzz Aldrin, who, with Neil Armstrong, was one of the first men to walk on the moon 40 years ago come July 20, wasn't expecting to speak to us either.

"Women's where what?" he asked as we sat down at the Omega flagship on Fifth Avenue, where the watch brand had asked Aldrin to attend the launch of its special edition Speedmaster Professional. The timepiece has the distinction of being the watch Aldrin and Armstrong wore while floating around the moon.

The watch brand is turning that association into a new marketing campaign to break next month. And it is not alone -- Louis Vuitton tapped Aldrin and two other American astronauts to feature in a print ad shot by Annie Leibovitz, also hitting magazines next month. In the meantime, expect plenty of moon-inspired fashion spreads, editorials supporting (or decrying) the space program, and wistful profiles of the Apollo era. It's moon madness time.

Thursday night, men's wear retailers, vendors and editors joined in remembrance of Stan Gellers, the Fairchild reporter who, in his 50-year career, was loved and renowned for his hard-boiled journalism, his tireless support of the tailored clothing industry and his infamously hot head.

It was a truism in men's wear that you weren't anybody until you had been yelled at by Stan. And in the two years that I worked with him, I witnessed a lot of nobodies become somebodies.

What is the future of the luxury market?

Few are asking that question more than Dana Thomas, the Paris-based fashion writer best known for her book "Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster," which documents and criticizes the rise of the mass luxury market.

Darwin's theory of evolution, which argues that only the fittest survive in a given environment, seems to have newfound currency in today's grisly marketplace.


"It's like judgment day for us. There are just too many stores out there for all of us to survive this," Rick Weinstein of Searle told WWD in December. "The best will survive."


A director at a textile company echoed Darwin's ideas of natural selection in another WWD story that ran in February. "We have to endure," said Kohji Yamanaka, director of the textile department at Mitsubishi Rayon Textile Co. "Such circumstances [force] textile manufacturers to exert themselves to survive. It might be tough, but it will be worth it."

Despite the grim prospects for 2009, retailers and vendors cite one positive aspect of their current situation: now, at least, they know what they're dealing with.

Unlike the last Vegas market, the industry is prepared for soft selling. They've trimmed assortments and open to buys; manufacturers have tailored their collections and adjusted pricing. In the immortal words of Tim Gunn, the retail community is trying to "make it work."