NAOMI IN COURT: Naomi Campbell is no stranger to court appearances, but according to British press reports she seems to be losing her appetite for litigation. London’s Evening Standard said Monday that Campbell has discontinued her latest court case in London, in which she accused her former personal assistant, Vanessa Frisbee, of selling a story about her to the News of the World tabloid in 2000. According to the reports, officials at London’s High Court ordered Campbell to pay 90 percent of Frisbee’s legal costs after she abandoned the case, in addition to the costs she will pay to her own legal team. The case is the latest twist in Campbell’s mixed history with the British legal system. In 2004, she won a case against London’s Daily Mirror, after the High Court ruled the tabloid invaded her privacy by publishing pictures of her attending Narcotics Anonymous. In 2008, she was ordered to perform community service after pleading guilty to six offenses — including assaulting a police officer — on a British Airways flight at London’s Heathrow Airport earlier that year.
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HERE COMES THE SUN: Following the holiday break, a trip to Florida will be in the near future for publishers at Condé Nast. Earlier this year, the company took a year off from hosting its annual publishers meeting in sunny Florida — cancelling its original itinerary for Key Largo — and instead hosted a more recession-friendly awards ceremony in New York. A spokeswoman confirmed to WWD the publishers meeting will not be held in New York again; instead, the company plans to head to Key Largo in late January.
— Amy Wicks
SPITTING IMAGE?: European efforts to ban airbrushing in fashion photography are gaining momentum. The U.K.’s Committee of Advertising Practice has received a report compiled by more than 40 academics that demands a ban on ads featuring digitally altered models targeting girls under 16 years old.
The report, signed by academics from countries including the U.K., the U.S., Australia and Brazil, comes just six weeks after a group of French politicians proposed a law that could require all retouched photos to be labeled as such.
The U.K. report shows a correlation between unhealthy behavior in adolescents who are exposed to images of skinny, airbrushed models. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) is responsible for updating and revising the British code of advertising.
“The weight of the evidence…shows that thin, ‘perfected’ media images have a detrimental effect on how girls and women think and feel about their own bodies,” said Dr. Helga Dittmar of the University of Sussex, one of the authors of the report.
A spokeswoman for the CAP said she was unable to comment specifically on the report. She said, however, “If a specific digitally altered advert creates a misleading or harmful impression, we can take action. However, we are bound by European law, and it would be very difficult to change the law as it stands.”
— Louise Bartlett