Anna Karenina Costumes Go On Display: A handful of the Oscar-nominated costumes from Anna Karenina will be exhibited in London, starting tomorrow through April 4. The costumes, created by Jacqueline Durran, will be displayed at Ham House in Richmond—a key filming location for the movie. [Vogue UK]

Bernard Arnault’s Belgian Aspirations Continue: Left-wing French paper, Libération, has kindly given LVMH’s Bernard Arnault another helping of their front-page treatment. Following their September cover headlined with the French version of, “Get Lost you Rich Idiot!,” they’ve now published a lengthy piece on, “The Belgian Secrets of Bernard Arnault.” The article reveals Arnault’s creation of a complicated foundation in Belgium, a country where his application for citizenship has been rejected. France does not currently allow for private foundations, hence why it was reportedly established in a neighboring country. The foundation outlines Arnault’s children’s inheritance rights. Meanwhile, in retaliation of Libération’s first cover, LVMH has apparently pulled all of their advertising from the already-struggling paper. [Telegraph]

“It is now three weeks that we have no news about our parents,” begins the haunting message tweeted Friday by the children of Vittorio Missoni, Maurizia Castiglioni, Elda Scalvenzi, and Guido Foresti. The foursome, along with a pilot and copilot, disappeared without a trace shortly after their twin-engine tourist plane left the Venezuelan island of Los Roques en route to Caracas the morning of Jan. 4. “It has not been clarified what happened to the flight from Los Roques to Caracas,” the children write. “To date the only certainty we have are the geographical coordinates where the aircraft vanished from the radars.”

It just got a lot easier to wear a concealed weapon in New Jersey.

On the last day of Paris’s spring 2013 haute couture presentations, a procession of boys and girls paraded down a narrow runway, swathed in an array of monochromatic, androgynous looks. The show’s boxy shapes, angular faces, and identical black bowl-cut wigs made it nearly impossible to tell the girls from the boys. But that was the point. The show was the work of designer Rad Hourani—the world’s first creator of unisex couture.

Hourani, age 30, is a Paris transplant by way of Montréal. Born in Jordan, his self-taught outlook on fashion is very different from his couture contemporaries—many of which presented sweet confectionary collections these past few days—a stark contrast to Hourani’s simplistic, sometimes even severe look. “Haute couture for me is about luxury and paying respect to all of the workmanship. It’s a respect for a design and luxury and quality, like an homage to art or things that have a value in society,” Hourani told The Daily Beast by phone last week.

On the heels of two controversial ad campaigns, United Colors of Benetton launched its spring-summer 2013 follow-up in Paris on Wednesday. Benetton famously coaxed virtual smooches from world leaders in 2011, and its 2012 Unemployee of the Year venture earned a new round of critiques. The new campaign sees the Italian knitwear giant get back to basics with a vibrant refresh of its colorful melting-pot aesthetic.

The new spring-summer 2013 pitch marks a foray into surprisingly untested terrain in United Colors of Benetton’s storied ad history: celebrity endorsements. It puts forward a roster of idiosyncratic models that all boast, as one Benetton executive put it, “incredible personal stories.” (Not a euphemism for homeliness, mind; the new faces are all lavishly hot.) The global campaign features nine spokesmodels with videos that spotlight the biographical quirks that might have hindered them—but actually made them famous. “The route they followed in order to get [to fashion success] was a very unusual route, a different route,” Alessandro Benetton, the Harvard-educated chairman who last April took the reins from his cofounder father, Luciano, told reporters in Paris. “It is perhaps one of the most ‘Benetton’ campaigns, productwise, that we have ever done.”

Standard-issue prisoners’ uniforms have taken hold of the runways in recent years, with their utilitarian influence popping up in collections from Dior and Stella McCartney. But it might surprise you to hear that the relationship works both ways: fashion has taken hold in jail, too. A class titled “Fashion Theory” is reportedly a wildly popular course with prisoners at the women’s jail on Rikers Island.

The class, taught by accessories designer, humanitarian, and Project Runway alum Anna Lynett Moss, reaches full capacity every time it’s run. It’s offered through the Prison Education Initiative, which also provides courses like law and hip-hop. “Attendance for classes typically ranges from 6 to 20 students, but for the fashion unit, we got 30 every time,” Moss told grassroots shopping website, Of a Kind. It’s there that Moss speaks with her students about society in relation to the modern fashion industry—assessing everything from Burberry’s recent use of Ghanaian wax-print techniques for their Resort 2012 collection, to photographer Edward Burtynsky’s close examination of the industrial landscapes where fast fashion is manufactured. Explains Moss of Burtynsky’s work, “[it] stood out as a reminder of what kind of conditions must exist in communities in developing nations so that we can buy sweaters for $7 from fast-fashion retailers … Many of my students said they prefer purchasing clothes second-hand, which is a smart alternative.”

Gaultier’s Hoop Skirt Trick: Jean Paul Gaultier took a page out of The Nutcracker’s classical costumes for his haute couture show yesterday. The French designer presented a hoop-skirt gown that was turned up to reveal four little girls crouching underneath. [Jezebel]

Vanity Fair’s Best Dressed List Wants You: Vanity Fair is changing up their annual Best Dressed list formula with the public’s participation. Starting this week, trendsetters can upload photos of themselves to VF’s site to be considered for a weekly slideshow and monthly prizes. At the end of it all, one woman and one man will be included in the magazine’s actual list, published in September. “People who come into the list in this way will probably have more interesting looks than those who come the traditional way,” Graydon Carter, the magazine’s editor told the Times. [NYT]

Raf Simons to Work on Film Costumes: Christian Dior creative director Raf Simons has a new side-project. Simons will outfit Sigourney Weaver and Isabelle Huppert for their upcoming film Body Art. Both women sat front row at Dior’s Haute Couture show earlier this week. This isn’t the first time that Simons has worked on costumes for a film. He created Tilda Swinton’s wardrobe in This Is Love, which received an Oscar nomination for its costumes. [Vogue UK] 

Coach Expanding Into Ready-To-Wear: Coach has found worldwide success with their line of accessories, so it only makes sense that clothing was in the pipeline. They brand is working to reposition themselves to contend with lifestyle giants like Michael Kors and Tory Burch. They’ll increase the price of their handbags, expand their footwear line, and take advantage of new hire Sandra Hill.

What’s not to like about a man who calls himself Gregory Gorgeous?

The androgynous 20-year-old Canadian, who really is quite pretty, has racked up 47 million YouTube views and 345,000 followers with kitschy makeup and fashion tutorials, product reviews, and stream-of-consciousness rants. For the past year, he’s been the star of The Avenue, a gossipy YouTube-distributed reality show in which a group of young fashion upstarts party, bicker, and reconcile with the predictable and soothing undulations of a generation reared on The Hills. Picture Whitney Port in Toronto, with a smaller budget and a looser grasp on reality. Oh, and the protagonist in the sequin dress is actually a boy.

NObama For You: Inaugural outfitters Jason Wu and J.Crew’s Jenna Lyons stopped by the Today Show this morning to talk about the afterglow following yesterday’s events. Wu admitted that dressing the First Lady, “Never gets old.” And Lyons said that J.Crew will not reissue the looks that the Obama’s wore yesterday, “out of respect for the First Family.” [NBC]

Alaïa To Release First Fragrance: Famously quiet designer Azzedine Alaïa has signed a deal with Beauté Prestige International to release his first-ever fragrance. No word yet on the perfume's name or when it will be released. Beauté Prestige International is also responsible for Narciso Rodriguez and Jean Paul Gaultier's fragrances [Fashionista]

Well here’s one way to take on gay marriage: Karl Lagerfeld sent not one – but two -- brides down the runway for the finale of his spring 2013 Chanel Haute Couture in Paris early Tuesday. The two models, in identical feathered wedding dresses and headpieces, walked hand-in-hand down the runway with Lagerfeld’s godson, Hudson Kroenig. According to The Guardian, Lagerfeld said it was a symbol of support for the controversial French gay marriage law. “I don’t even understand the debate,” he said.  

Michelle Obama’s done it again. She’s worn a Jason Wu dress for a second round of inaugural balls.

By the time the president took the stage at the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball to greet the audience and to introduce the first lady—“I have a date”—the Twitterverse was hyperventilating over which designer she would choose. (According to CNN, the first lady had narrowed it down to two designers from a pool of 15.)