betsey johnson

A look at the latest designer nail polish shades and the runway looks that inspired them.

See what the fashion Twittersphere is chattering about this week.

Reports have surfaced that Betsey Johnson LLC filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday night in New York as a result of poor sales in its chain of retail stores. Most of the 63 Betsey Johnson stores will close in the next few weeks and 350 employees are expected to lose their jobs. Betsey, the nearly 70-year-old cartwheeling designer, will remain on board as creative director and will continue to design the lower priced Betsey Johnson line and will oversee accessories and other licenses.

Betsey Johnson’s CFO, Jonathan Friedman, issued the following statement:

“She's been having financial problems for years and she was set to close about three years ago but they managed to keep the company going for a while longer,” Squizree noted. “It's sad because she's really quite iconic. I love the whimsical personality she puts in her clothes, and I've always somewhat preferred her to Sonia Rykiel,” he added.

Psylocke posted, “Oh no, that's awful, 350 people losing their jobs. I didn't even know she had so many stores and that her business was doing badly financially. I always assumed it was doing ok since I kind of thought every girl in the US wore her dresses to prom,” she laughed. “I always enjoyed her runway shows even though her designs are not my cup of tea at all. What a shame.”

Just as Psylocke said, even if you’re not a fan of Betsey Johnson’s designs, hearing about a company’s financial troubles and the effects it will have on so many people is always hard. We wish Betsey and all of her employees the best of luck.

Image: imaxTREE

My favorite model Charlotte Free has signed on to be the new face of Maybelline. This would be big news of its own accord, because Free's punky personality and quasi-provocative aesthetic make her a suprising choice for the beauty brand, which favors more conventionally pretty spokesmodels. It's hard to imagine Maybelline's famous slogan, "Maybe she was born with it; Maybe it's Maybelline," running below a photo of Free's bottle-dyed pink hair.

But the company's evidently shifting its marketing strategy: instead of breaking the news of its new relationship with Free to WWD or some other establishment media source, Maybelline commisioned the very lovable P'trique of "Sh*t Fashion Girls Say" to create a video around the story, pulling in cameos from major fashion bigshots like Betsey Johnson, Derek Blasberg, and John Jannuzzi. The brand then sent the clip to Fashionista as an exclusive. 

Maybelline didn't sign Charlotte Free as a way of appealing to a broad range of consumers, they signed her, and enlisted the help of viral fashion video guru P'trique, to appeal to online fashion obsessives — to people proccupied with being trendsetters.

Here's the video. It's extremely funny:

Image via WENN

Betsey Johnson has been staging runway shows for years, but now the iconic American fashion designer is going to take part in a different kind of show — a reality show.

Today, the Style Network unveiled its 2012 development plan, which includes a 25% increase in original programming. Some of the new shows: Built, which follows a crew of male models/handymen that remodel homes with their shirts off (!); a series about the inner workings of Kimora Lee Simmons' JustFab.com offices; and the aforementioned Betsey Johnson show, Betsey + Lulu.

Starring mama Johnson, her daughter Lulu Johnson, and Lulu's two daughters, the foursome live together in a co-op on the Upper East Side, and many multigenerational antics ensue. Which raises the question: what's it like to have Betsey Johnson as a mom? In my imagination, the designer spends her days skipping down the streets of Manhattan in flouncy skirts, playing air guitar whenever she hits a red light. Could you imagine Betsey in pajamas? Drinking tea? Giving relationship advice? I'm going to have to see it to believe it.

The announcement was made over breakfast at Diane Von Furstenberg's studio in Manhattan. Some of the Style Network's current crop of stars were in attendance:

• Bill Rancic, currently featured on Style's Giuliana & Bill will be getting his own show in the coming year. Pitched as an "aspirational home makeover show," Ultimate Home with Bill Rancic will feature the real estate baron flipping houses on camera. 
   
• Tia and Tamera Mowry are gearing up for the second season of Tia & Tamera. They wore matching tangerine dresses and giant smiles because they are sisters, sisters.
   
• Pamela Martin Duarte and Hannah Gelbart, the mother-daughter pair of Big Rich Texas.
   
• And last, but definitely not least, the very charming Jeannie Mai of How Do I Look? looked great in a fitted floral dress. She told me the dress had actually been her backup: some eyeshadow exploded all over her original choice earlier that morning. From where I was sitting, it looked like a happy accident.

Image via Andres Otero / WENN.com

I just came across this little browser app, My Next Tweet, which generates a tweet based on a user's previous Twitter activity. WE ARE ALL SO PREDICTABLE. My Next Tweet even picked up on my "bizarre" (and well-documented) obsession with Tyra Banks.

Are you following us on Twitter yet, BTW? Look how good our tweets are!

To get a sense of where fashion's been — and where it's going, I checked out the forecasted tweets for the five most Tweety fashion Twitter accounts of February 2012, as calculated by Stylophane.

Ready?

1. DKNY PR Girl (@DKNY)

Always Umm NO! lol I are good point about I mean, I'd pull the Upper East Side.

2. Lauren Conrad (@LaurenConrad)

@coachella: Today is an exit :- It's things I don't care what I've got us completely figured out Little.

3. TOMS (@TOMS)

Find or create long-term giving first-hand Join us if you're free this with NEW Spring is not the TOMS.

4. Betsey Johnson (@xoBetseyJohnson)

BETSEY WONDERS…what do you like? BETSEY WONDERS…what do you like Betsey's rosebud skirt!

5. Kate Spade (@KateSpadeNY)

Brad would he swan dive or cannonball? you decide. we'll be sure is. take a line is spring with the!

[via BuzzFeed]

Here's some news that shouldn't surprise anyone with a Twitter account and a habit of following fashion brands: Donna Karan's SVP of Communications, who goes by the avatar DKNY PR Girl and heads social media for the entire brand, out-tweeted every single other fashion twit around.

According to WWD, Aliza Licht tweeted 1,105 times in February, about three times more than the second and third more prolific fashion Tweeters around: Kate Spade and Betsey Johnson posted "just" 365 and 352 times, respectively.

One has to imagine that Licht has some superhuman thumb strength. Also, if you think about these numbers too much (as I did), you'll start to suspect that DKNY PR Girl isn't actually a person behind an avatar, but an avatar through and through.

There were 29 days this February, so that means DKNY PR Girl tweeted about 38 times a day (I am counting weekends, here). Let's say she sleeps eight hours a day (probably less, but if we factor in shower time and nail-painting, I think there must be a solid eight hours a day that Licht is simply incapable of Tweeting), so she has sixteen viable Tweet hours per diem. That means she needs to post to Twitter at least two times an hour, every hour of her waking life.

I think I would go insane. Quite simply. Twitter might be fun and light, but it still requires a good amount of emotional labor, like all other social interaction. Particularly for someone repping a major brand. Licht has to be on all the time, which means if she's ever feeling sad or dissapointed or nervous, she's got to keep Tweeting as if everything were fine. People are not built to be Twitter robots and I don't know how she does it. I'd like to say I'm impressed, but mostly, I just want to confiscate her iPhone. DKNY PR Girl needs a day off.

Image via Teen Vogue

It wasn't chic or even wearable but Betsey sure knows how to have fun. 

Mark your calendar, puff up your couch cushions, go get your laptop repaired, pay your Internet bill, call a friend: thirty Mercedes Benz Fashion Week runway shows will be streaming live from Lincon Center to YouTube for your fashion-y pleasure. It's even better than actually going to the shows because you don't have to shower and get dressed and take the subway and stare at your shoes in shame while you wait in line. Also, your cat can hang out with you and you can eat a burrito and charge your phone if it runs out of batteries and if anyone tries to call you or knocks on your door you can scream at them to go away.

So if you're a little bit of a recluse or haven't figured out how to claw your way into the shows, bookmark the YouTube livestream page and this article, so that you won't miss a single show:

Thursday, February 9

• 9:00 AM  —  Nicholas K
• 10:00AM — BCBGMAXAZRIA
• 11:00AM — Richard Chai

Friday, February 10

• 2:00 PM — Rebecca Taylor
• 3:00 PM — Rebecca Minkoff
• 6:00 PM — Charlotte Ronson

Saturday, February 11

• 10:00 AM — Lacoste
• 11:00 AM — Jill Stuart
• 3:00 PM — Herve Léger by Max Azria
• 6:00 PM — TIBI
• 7:00 PM — Monique Lhuillier

Sunday, February 12

• 2:00 PM — Tracy Reese
• 3:00 PM — Custo Barcelona
• 4:00 PM — Diane von Furstenberg

Monday, February 13

• 10:00 AM — Carolina Herrera
• 11:00 AM — Carlos Miele
• 3:00 PM    Reem Acra
• 5:00 PM — Bibhu Mohapatra
• 6:00 PM — Betsey Johnson

Tuesday, February 14

• 10:00 AM — Badgley Mischka
• 11:00 AM — Vera Wang
• 3:00 PM — Dennis Basso
• 8:00 PM — Narciso Rodriguez

Wednesday, February 15

• 10:00 AM — Michael Kors
• 2:00 PM — J. Mendel
• 3:00 PM —  Milly by Michelle Smith
• 6:00 PM — Anna Sui
• 7:00 PM — Vivienne Tam

Image via Mercedes Benz Fashion Week

The lineup in the glamorous front row is almost as exciting as the lineup on the runways at NYFW.