Building a fake New York City in the back lots of LA is expensive and difficult -- not to mention ridiculously unnecessary when there's a perfectly good real NYC only a few thousand miles away. Apparently, Ugly Betty's producers have finally caught on to this revolutionary concept, and insiders say the whole production is headed for the East Coast. No more green screens of New York skylines or LA streets dressed up to look like New York -- next season's Ugly Betty will be shot in the real Gotham.

We're a little confused over why they even started filming the show in LA, except maybe that they didn't expect the show to last 2 seasons, but they were obviously dead wrong. Now that they're looking at the long-term, ABC execs are looking for ways to cut down costs and still get that authentic New York vibe. We think they'll be happy with their decision. New Yorkers Vanessa Williams and Ana Ortiz are probably happy about it too.

[via Perez}

Here in America, we love us some beauty pageants, and Miss USA is no exception. The gossip, spills, and thrills make the ridiculous contest a must see for all fiends of pop culture. But apparently, Heather Mills has a different impression of why Americans tune in to watch the pageant -- to see her gold-digging celebrity face.

It's hard to imagine why she has such a high opinion of her popularity here in the States, when the New York Post is reporting that the audience "booed and hissed when Mills was announced as a judge for the show." Still, somehow she's found a way to convince herself that America loves her. Reportedly, her enormous ego prompted her to launch an all-out attack on the show's producers to fatten up her contract.

The guys at American Apparel may consider Woody Allen their spiritual leader, but apparently they didn't read up on his teachings regarding celebrity endorsements, or copyright infringement. Woody's legal team filed a lawsuit yesterday against the clothing company, seeking damages in excess of $10 million for using an unlicensed image of the filmmaker in some of their billboard advertisements. The billboards went up last May in New York and LA, where they were on display for about a week before they got pulled. In the gospel according to Woody: you use an image from one of his films without permission, you get served.

Oh, boy.

And by "oh, boy," I mean the boys in LA have got to be loving the fact that Kiki de Montparnasse has opened up a store in the City of Angels. In case you don't know who, or what, Kiki de Montparnasse is, let me give you a little heads up. Kiki de Montparnasse is a line of ultra high-end lingerie that celebrates "sexy." In fact, some of it's downright "kinky," but in a luxurious, sophisticated way. We're not talking about Trashy or Frederick's here. Not sure what I mean? Take a peek at some of KdM's pieces.

The new store in LA features an aphrodisiac garden, the store set up like a boudoir, and best of all, plush dressing rooms that, in the spirit of sensual exploration, come equipped with accessories, mirrors, and multiple light settings.

Kiki de Montparnasse
8280 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
(323) 951-9545

For those of us retro-y style fans out there planning a late-summer road trip (and who also happen to live in the LA area), we might want to mark our calendars for Saturday August 25 for a quick visit to Design Within Reach (DWR) in Manhattan Beach.

DWR has partnered with architect and designer Chris Deam to introduce the Design Within Reach Airstream travel trailer. Deam gutted a vintage Airstream trailer, keeping the aluminum shell, but bringing a lighter, more spacious feeling to the interior. The special edition trailer will be showcased at the Manhattan Beach store. Details about the event are on the DWR website.

If Paris Hilton sneezes, it's reported in every major newspaper on the planet, so it's not surprising that, when the cele-brat actually does something, it's a big deal.

Yesterday, when the heiress unveiled her new clothing line at Kitson, a trendy LA boutique. The crowd was so enormous that police and city workers were called to the scene, and a lane of traffic was closed to keep people from being hit by passing cars as they spilled into the street.

Of course, when Paris revealed she wasn't going to take her top off and say something stupid, the friendly masses turned angry, and started to riot, but it was going really well there for a minute.

Just kidding. By the sounds of it, everyone was very nice, and the clothes sound half-decent. According to Paris, they're even "affordable" -- though, who knows what affordable means when you're an heiress.

If you're a design and decor freak and you happen to live in Los Angeles, you'll be happy to know that the NYC-based Moss has made its way out here. The new store opened last week at 8444 Melrose Avenue at North Croft.

Not familiar with Moss? To get a feel for what kind of cool, beautifully and well-designed stuff they have, pop on over to their online store at www.mossonline.com and browse through their stuff, like a spherical copper lamp shade for $545. It's not just lighting and furniture either. They have gadgets, things for the kitchen and tabletop, and even books.

Did you ever think you could be so lucky? I can hardly contain myself [insert sarcasm here].

Paris Hilton will be at Kitson boutique on August 16th from 1-3pm promoting her new clothing line. Whether people are interested in what Paris has to sell or not you know the line to get in will be long. In order to skip ahead of the crowd you will need to purchase a gift voucher for $100 or more. Kitson claims that Paris Hilton will be on hand to personally style each of her fans. Right.

Paris' line already has two pieces available for pre-order on Kitson.com which includes the shirt she has been spotted around town in; you know the one with her own pop art inspired face on it. There is also a pair of cheesy $88 jeans, which I am pretty sure Paris wouldn't be caught dead in. The jeans are of the skinny variety, have a twisted seam which looks to be bedazzled with studs, and no back pockets. For those of you who don't know jeans with no back pockets is a huge fashion no-no, you may as well have "tramp" stamped on your rear.

So there you have it folks -- finally a Paris Hilton line of clothing because having Nikki hog up all of talent just wasn't enough; which proves that there is plenty of room in Hollywood for crappy celebrity clothing lines. Whew!

I am familiar with Literature Clothing, but know it for its graphic-printed t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies and mostly casual pants. Seeing the Literature Fall 2007 collection during LA Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios was a little bit of a surprise, though I expected something different from a line called "Literature Noir." Everything was a little more dressed up. The women were in short little skirts and dresses, with a featured black print on nude/khaki (right, in the image above) that showed up on several babydolls and a long gown. In fact, I almost fell over myself for the babydoll shown. Some of the pieces were a little odd, like the black smock shown in the middle, which looked a little too much like a smock you'd throw on at the beauty parlor, particuarly with the hair styling on the models. Otherwise, not a bad showing from Literature Noir for Fall 2007.

Alvin Valley's Fall 2007 collection, while at first did almost nothing for me, is kind of growing on me. I thought the colors were typical and the designs somewhat boring except the strange shape on the voluminous pants, but after thinking about it for a while, I realized that while it was rather ho-hum, they were all very wearable. I love the loose comfort of cowl necks, simple dresses, and especially the smart little silver dress in the middle of the photos above. The dress is pretty, no doubt, even girlish with that big fat bow at the waist, but how much can you love pockets on an evening-ish dress?

I think I might have found the collection that made my Fashion Week: Joey Tierney.

Granted, it's not often, no, pretty much it never happens, that an entire collection will make me say "yes," and though Joey Tierney's Fall 2007 collection wasn't 100% perfect, I liked a lot of it. Tierney's palette was mostly black with some rich jewel-ized green. I am not fond of wearing green, but it was a nice refreshing change from all the typical autumn colors. I'm getting a little tired of shorts, but I loved all her use of sheers, whether it was lace shirt or sheer fabric on an evening gown, not that I could actually see someone wearing a sheer gown in public like that. Then again, this is LA and anything goes.

As you well know now, while we made it inside Boulevard 3 for the event that was co-sponsored by 944 Magazine, we never made it into the actual runway show for 2 B Free's Fall 2007 collection. Doesn't matter though, because from what I can tell, we didn't miss too much. None of the pieces nor complete "looks" were all that different from one another, nor were they all that different from any of the other graphic-print, slightly rocker-chic inspired California casual knit wear that we have seen for years from a number of designers. Bright colors, reactive dyes, layers, t-shirts, and hoodies that can be worn from the grocery store to dinner on Sunset Blvd were nothing, and I mean nothing, we haven't seen before. The one thing that deserves mention, though, is how shockingly "plump" and slightly awkward Paris Hilton looks on the runway. Paris is, of course, a very thin girl, and yet, by comparison to the models, she looked normal. For the models, that's frightening.

We made it, y'all. We barely made it through LA Fashion Week last week on the little amount of actualy food I ate and the even less amount of sleep. You see, the runway shows were during the afternoons, so yo'd expect that I could rush right home and blog the reviews, but oh no. Some of the "unofficial" shows that were were not held on-site at Smashbox Studios were later at night. Basically, the night shows were just an excuse to party.

2BFree was one of the designers who did their show elsewhere. They teamed up with 944, a lifestyle site and magazine, and took over Boulevard 3, a new "event space" in Hollywood. I'll do a short write-up of the runway show I didn't see (I'll explain later), but for now, let's just talk about the club chaos that was the 944 party.

About a month ago, we posted about how New York Magazine followed the diets of four people fom the fashion world during New York's Fall 2007 Fashion Week. With all of the hype about skinny models and low BMIs, we would have expected to see the diets of the two models to include pretty much just water and uh, water? We were wrong. As it turns out, it was the fashion magazine editor who ate the least!

Well, I'm here to surprise us even more! It seems that a fashion and food blogger eats almost as little as a magazine editor! Yes, kittens, I decided it would be fun to do the same thing while covering LA Fashion Week last week so I kept track of everything I ingested (except a few bottles of water here and there) for the five days of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

Based on my diet I think I'm okay as a fashion blogger, but I might have lost my street cred as a food blogger! I rarely ate breakfast other than coffee and vitamins, I ate a few salads for lunch, almost nothing for dinner. The detailed diary is over on Slashfood.

Tart is certainly a change of pace after seeing the colored chaos of graffiti- and tattoo-inspired fashions of Ed Hardy. Tart's color palette was subdued with deep wine, rich eggplant, scarlet, black, and white showing up as solids in short mini-dresses, and all together in a bold-print that looked more appropriate for sundresses in the warmer months than autumn. The entire collection looked comfortable and very wearable. My favorite is the dress shown on the left with puffed ¾-length sleeved, a rounded v-neck, draped sides, and of course, that super-high hemline that's screaming for some nude-colored knee-high boots.