SHOP MARTHA: Martha Stewart: magazine publisher, book author, merchandiser, television host and, soon, retailer? There are still a few business ideas that Stewart, 69, wants to tackle, and that appears to be one of them. Freestanding stores could become a reality, Stewart admitted during a question-and-answer session led by HSN’s Mindy Grossman at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Executive Women in Fashion event on Thursday evening. Stewart’s company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, has also talked to hotel chains about redesigning their rooms and “lifestyle hotels.”
Stewart’s business has come a long way during the past few years, following her jail time and a rebuilding effort, which happened to coincide with the economic downturn. “I listened to the wrong people,” she said of her conviction for insider trading. “Now I’m much more questioning of certain things.”
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Unsurprisingly, Stewart then directed the conversation away from prison talk to lighter matters, including the release of the company’s first iPad magazine app, as special issue of Martha Stewart Living, and her growing merchandising business, which now has more than 40,000 products that Stewart has designed and developed, in the marketplace. At the end of the event, Stewart took questions, including one from a Reed Krakoff employee. “I catered Reed’s bar mitzvah,” Stewart said. “I still have all his contracts in my files, and all the correspondence I did with his mother about it.” She even attended his show during New York Fashion Week. Talk about full circle. — Amy Wicks
A NEW FACE: Deborah Needleman has tapped Alexa Brazilian as style editor of Off Duty, the weekly lifestyle section that runs in the WSJ weekend edition. Brazilian was fashion news editor at Elle. — A.W.
GROUP DYNAMICS: Alexander McQueen has found its new worldwide communications director, and she comes from inside Gucci Group, WWD has learned. Masako Kumakura, currently worldwide communications director at Boucheron, will join the London-based fashion house on Nov. 1. Marie de Foucaud, international public relations manager at Boucheron, will succeed Kumakura. — Miles Socha
X FILES: Leave it to “Kids” movie director Larry Clark, known for his controversial documentation of troubled youth, to shock the French. A retrospective of the photographer and filmmaker’s work, which just opened at Paris’ Museum of Modern Art, has received an X-rating from Paris City Hall. The exhibition, which features 200 previously unseen photographs by Clark, will end on Jan. 2.
Meanwhile, surrounded by skate shoes and graffiti books, Clark attended Colette’s launch of the biannual New York-based publication “The Dirty Durty Diary (DDD),” during Paris Fashion Week. Featuring Clark on the cover alongside his muse, Tiffany Limos, who is also DDD’s editor at large, the 270-page issue sells for $25. Each issue covers film, fashion, art and literature and will explore the lives and loves of its cover stars.
Content for the debut issue was provided by a host of Clark’s famous friends, including Calvin Klein, who interviewed him, and Marc Jacobs, who collaborated on a photo shoot inspired by his movies.
For the next edition, “The French Issue,” fashion director Justin Min promised “a unique take on France and Paris,” with a French star on the cover and a cinematic theme. — Eleanor Fullalove