J. CREW’S NEW COLLECTION/2 CHANEL’S RODEO REMAKE/3Women’s Wear Daily • The Retailers’ Daily Newspaper • August 14, 2007 • $2.00

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The Last QueenBy Mort Sheinman and Lorna Koski

Philanthropist, social doyenne, symbol of WASP aristocracy, Brooke Astor was a New York icon.

And her longevity was as much a part of her immense legacy as anything. Astor died Monday afternoon at age 105 of pneumonia, according to Kenneth E. Warner, the attorney for her son, Anthony Marshall. Funeral arrangements were not completed by press time. But her tombstone, according to her wishes, will be inscribed with the simple but apt words, “I had a wonderful life,” her son said in a statement.

That life was the stuff of romance novels. She was tall (5 foot 7 inches), slender and vivacious. The late

historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said she had

WWDTUESDAY Ready-to-Wear/Textiles

Brooke Astor, with

a portrait of her husband

Vincent in the background,

in 1976.

See The Wonderful, Page 6

WWD.COM2 WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

WWDTUESDAYReady-to-Wear/Textiles

GENERALBrooke Astor, the socially prominent philanthropist who became a New York fi xture, died at her home in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., at the age of 105.

The Chanel boutique on Rodeo Drive reopens Wednesday with a feminine design that pays tribute to its legendary founder, Coco Chanel.

Seeking to get merchandise to stores quicker, Macy’s Inc. will build a state-of-the-art distribution center in Minooka, Ill., near Chicago.

TRANSIT: Congress took several steps to improve the nation’s aging network of highways, railways and ports before the August recess.

TEXTILES: Exhibitors at two textile design shows found buyers breaking away from the traditional and looking for updated seasonal favorites.

Sales at apparel and accessories stores rose a seasonally adjusted 1.3 percent last month, as department stores posted a 1.6 percent increase.

EYEIt was a long weekend for Elie Tahari, beginning with a trip to the hospital for his wife, Rory, followed by a party for his new East Hampton store.

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● ASDA LOSES GEORGE CHIEF: Angela Spindler, managing director of the George line at Asda, Wal-Mart’s U.K. arm, has abruptly stepped down from her post and quit the company. The retailer said Spindler, a 10-year Asda veteran, had left for “family reasons.” She had replaced Andy Bond, who is now Asda’s president and chief executive, at the end of 2005. Bond temporarily will cover the job until a replacement is found, the company said. Spindler’s departure comes at a pivotal time for the brand. As reported, George will go online early next year, and there are plans in the works for a U.S. relaunch. However, industry sources said Asda is not opening George stores fast enough, and the brand is losing ground to competitors. Over the past year, Asda has lost share of the U.K. clothing market by sales volume. Asda currently has 7.5 percent, compared with Tesco’s 8.6 percent, Primark’s 8.9 percent and Marks & Spencer’s 11.4 percent.

● WAGE WOES FOR ARCADIA: Sir Philip Green, owner of Topshop and its parent, Arcadia, is investigating a report by the Sunday Times of London that one of the group’s knitwear sup-pliers in Mauritius is engaging in nonethical work practices. The report said Sri Lankan, Indian and Bangladeshi workers on the island were being paid less than $10 a day for up to 12 hours of work, six days a week. The wages, it said, are 40 percent below the island’s average, and are fixed according to race, with the Bangladeshis earning the least. “Arcadia takes exceptionally se-riously the code of conduct which all suppliers sign,” an Arcadia statement said Monday. “Serious breaches will not be tolerated and a remedy will be sought [if any] have occurred.”

● TAKING CHINA TO THE WTO: Following through on its trade case against China, the U.S. asked the World Trade Or-ganization to establish a dispute settlement panel to examine China’s policies for the protection of intellectual property rights. The U.S. brought the case against China in April and the two countries met to discuss the issue in early June, but were unable to come to an accord. The U.S. maintains that China doesn’t do enough to protect intellectual property. For instance, Chinese criminal law has a threshold, whereby people are not prosecuted until they are caught with a cer-tain number of pirated goods.

In Brief

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J. Crew Line Goes LuxeBy Sharon Edelson

NEW YORK — J. Crew is taking its fashion to the next level — luxury — with the J. Crew Collection.

The handpicked assortment of luxe, limited edition items offi cially will launch online with a mini Web site in the fall. Meanwhile, the company on April 22 will open its fi rst Collection store, a 2,500-square-foot unit at 1035 Madison Avenue near 79th Street here.

Millard “Mickey” Drexler, chair-man and chief executive offi cer of J. Crew Group, said Collection was a natural outgrowth of the J. Crew core product. “As we looked at the market, we said we’re going to keep stepping up quality, design and de-tailing and see if we meet with any kind of [price] resistance,” he added. “Whenever we did this, customers kept buying and liking it more. They still are, and want more of the best. For us, it’s a natural opportunity….The best costs too much.”

If the Madison Avenue store does well, there could be more Collection store openings. “There are certain-ly a few locations we could go to in the U.S.,” Drexler said, referring to major cities. “We do think it has a really good opportunity, particularly given the landscape of the better business. It’s an opportunity to sell better goods with better fabri-cations and designed goods. This is not going to be the biggest part of our business. We never see it as widely distributed as the J. Crew product.”

Yet, opening the Collection store on Madison Avenue “is a pretty big move forward for us,” Drexler said. “If a year ago you said, ‘You’ll be open-ing a Collection store,’ I would have said, ‘No way.’ But we see what the demand has been. People have been asking for Collection goods in our stores.”

Collection, which had a soft launch online in the spring, features items such as a cashmere hacking jacket for $595, a suede dress for $595 and a silk radzimir gown, $1,950. Collection pieces have unusu-al prints or colors to distinguish them from the run-of-the-mill. For example, a baby-doll dress, priced

at $225, has an allover print of library books, and a $298 cashmere cardigan sweater with large buttons comes in a bright shade of tangerine. “Part of it is the tangerine [color] and part of it is the buttons,” Drexler said, explaining the item’s appeal. “The last part is the detail and the fi t. Essentially, we’re bring-ing an entire point of view to our better goods.”

J. Crew’s 2004 partnership with Loro Piana for cashmere and wool was so well received and at-tracted so much attention the company decided to

continue pursuing “unparalleled quality, high-end detailing and luxury at a more approachable price point.”

The retailer now has partner-ships with couture beader Shameeza, Italian print house Ratti, leather man-ufacturer Borge Garveri and Clerici duchesse satin, which has provided fabric for Vera Wang and Chanel. In addition, J. Crew works with Italian mills and Irish linen houses.

Collection has its own label, dis-tinguishing pieces from the main J. Crew assortment. The company called Collection “a natural evolu-tion, representing a grown-up ver-sion of J. Crew’s ‘classics with a twist’ style — updated with an emphasis on elevated quality and originality.”

Drexler said Collection will con-tinue to focus on its existing cat-

egories, which include dresses, outerwear, shoes, handbags and jewelry — “areas where customers are used to buying designer goods. We have as af-fl uent an audience as any company has. Does this represent a relative value to customer? So far, we haven’t seen a ceiling. This is reasonably compel-ling to a lot of our customers.”

With women mixing high and low fashion, Drexler observed that “customers don’t shop by price alone. They’re looking to invest in special items. We’ve trained our customers to understand the level of quality.”

Drexler revealed few details about the Madison Avenue store, saying: “The clothes are going to speak for themselves. I don’t think any store is about its materials. It’s not going to be a pretentious, de-signer-y store. It will be a cool, J. Crew store.”

Abercrombie in Deal for SoHo SpaceNEW YORK — Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has signed a lease to open a 40,000-square-foot store at 600 Broadway between Houston and Prince Streets in SoHo, ac-cording to informed sources. The

company declined to comment. The SoHo store is not as big

as the 65,000-square-foot, 14-story fl agship in the Ginza dis-trict of Tokyo that Abercrombie plans to open in 2009, but is larger than the 36,000-square-foot fl agship at 720 Fifth Avenue and 56th Street that the compa-ny opened in November 2005.

The SoHo space is now oc-cupied by Pottery Barn, which is expected to close to make way for A&F. A group of investors led by Alex Adjmi recently bought the six-story, 65,000-square-foot building at 600 Broadway. Adjmi, who also owns 568 Broadway, which houses an A|X Armani Exchange store and an upcom-ing Forever 21 unit.

Abercrombie’s SoHo unit will be the retailer’s third store in Manhattan. A unit on Water Street at the South Street Seaport opened in 1988. The Fifth Avenue fl agship, with its high-traffi c location, generates

$55 million in annual sales.Broadway in SoHo also

boasts a high pedestrian traffi c count, especially on weekends, when hordes of shoppers fi ll the street. A&F’s downtown neigh-bors will include Bloomingdale’s at 504 Broadway, Uniqlo at 546, H&M at 558 and Prada at 575.

Asking rent for ground-fl oor space on Broadway is about $282 a square foot, and can go as high as $400 a square foot, according to real estate brokers.

Abercrombie, which is aimed at 18- to 22-year-olds, has been working on its European ex-pansion. The company, which opened an A&F flagship at 7 Burlington Gardens in London, has a goal of opening, during the next fi ve years, 10 to 12 units in Europe, where there’s said to be pent-up demand for the brand.

The retailer also is working on a fl agship prototype for its Hollister division.

— S.E.

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WWD.COM3WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

By David Moin

Seeking to get merchandise to stores and customers quicker, Macy’s Inc. will

build a state-of-the-art distribution center in Minooka, Ill., approximately 50 miles southwest of Chicago.

The 850,000-square-foot facility will open in early spring, service the 63 stores that make up the Macy’s North division (formerly Marshall Field’s) and replace an existing distribution center on Diversey Avenue in Chicago. Macy’s is selling the existing property.

“[The new facility] will have the new-est equipment for moving merchandise from vendor shipments to the stores. The amount of time merchandise is in the dis-tribution center will be measured in min-utes, not in days or weeks,” said a Macy’s spokesman.

“We had very specifi c requirements for purchasing an existing facility that would be highly effi cient and could move a larger volume of goods more quickly to the sales fl oors of our stores,” Macy’s vice chairman Tom Cole said in a statement. “Minooka represented an optimal combi-nation of easy access to interstate trans-portation networks serving the region and the near-term availability of a large, one-story distribution facility with room for expansion to serve future needs of our rapidly expanding direct-to-consum-er businesses. While our current Chicago distribution center — which contains 1.55 million square feet spread over six

stories of a building developed in stages since the 1930s — has served the com-pany well for decades, it is antiquated and ineffi cient for moving merchandise to meet current standards in the retailing industry.”

Since its takeover of May Department Stores Co. and the conversion of most May doors into Macy’s in the fall, Macy’s has been experiencing flagging sales. However, the retailer is working to get out the kinks in its new national Macy’s chain and has been streamlining and updating its logistics network for effi -ciencies in merchandise fl ow. A direct-to-consumer center opened in Portland, Tenn., in June, and another being built in Goodyear, Ariz., is scheduled to open in the spring.

The facility in Minooka will employ 210 full- and part-time associates, compared with 350 workers at the current center, leading to some cost savings over the long term. It could be expanded to help serve macys.com, the spokesman said.

The furniture clearance store in the Chicago distribution center will be relo-cated to a retail center near the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Ill., which will open in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The $27 billion Macy’s operates more than 850 department stores, as well as macys.com, bloomingdales.com and Bloomingdale’s By Mail. Macy’s Logistics operates about 20 distribution cen-ters. The logistics division president is Peter Longo.

WEEKLY READER: News travels fast, and according to the fi rst-half fi gures reported by Audit Bureau of Circulations, it seems both newsweeklies and celebrity weeklies are having trouble keeping up with the fl ow

of information. While six-month reports in the past few years have showed skyrocketing growth for the celebrity category, the more mature titles have slowed, posting soft newsstand results for the fi rst six months of 2007. Of those titles, People reported a 5.6 percent decline in single-copy sales, to 1.4 million, while overall circ fell 2.2 percent to 3.7 million. Its fi rst half of 2007 compares with the year-ago period where it banked 2.3 million single copies in one week thanks to exclusive photos of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. Us Weekly reported a 3.4 percent decline in single-copy sales, to 971,756, but a 4.8 percent growth in total circulation, to 1.8 million. And Star, which missed its 1.5 million rate base for the period by about 40,000 copies, reported a 3.5 percent dip in single-copy sales, to 726,037.

Are readers fi nally sick of Paris Hilton and regular rehabbers Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears? “It might be some reader fatigue,” said People managing editor Larry Hackett. “This has been one where the news stories and personalities involved started to have some of the same old, same old feel, and the likeability in some of the personalities has started to fade.” People’s top three newsstand sellers this period came thanks to non-news related established franchises — its January Half Their Size issue on weight loss sold 1.6 million copies, its annual 100 Most Beautiful People sold 1.8 million copies and the issue featuring Patrick Dempsey’s twins sold 1.7 million issues. In addition, the rapid-paced news cycle puts all of the weeklies at a disadvantage — blogs and television news outlets can exhaust news that breaks on a Monday (like the Virginia Tech shootings) by the time the weeklies hit a few days later.

Nevertheless, the younger — and cheaper — Bauer Publishing titles still showed newsstand strength. In Touch posted 10.6 percent growth, to 1.2 million, while Life & Style reported a 6.8 increase, to 744,294. OK! reported total paid and verifi ed circ of 809,411, a growth of 54.3 percent; newsstand increased 25.3 percent.

The newsweeklies, which generally garner a small portion of their total circulation from single copies, reported even softer results. Newsweek reported fl at total circulation growth, at 3.1 million. Time reported a 17.1 percent decline in total circulation, to 3.4 million, and single-copy sales declined 13.6 percent. The magazine underwent a major transition this winter — it pared back its rate base to 3.25 million from 4 million, bumped up the cover price to $4.95 from $3.95, and switched its publication date to Friday, a move which managing editor Richard Stengel called a “home run” in terms of subscriber satisfaction (which nevertheless is not refl ected in its soft numbers). “Ninety percent of our subscription base gets it by Saturday morning,” said Stengel. But when the title was published on Monday, “people weren’t always sure of what day they got it. Now it’s a weekend magazine. They have time to read it and they spend more time with it.” Finally, fi gures for The New Yorker and New York prove once again that there’s little correlation between ASME awards and better circulation performance. The New Yorker reported a slight increase in total circulation, at 1.1 million. New York, meanwhile, reported a 1.4 percent decline in total circulation. — Stephanie D. Smith

NOT IN VOGUE: Men’s Vogue has lost two top members of its visual team: creative director Russell Labosky and photo editor Mark Jacobson. A spokeswoman for the magazine said the two had left “to pursue other interests,” and that the magazine was interviewing successors. — Irin Carmon

CELEBRITY JOURNAL: It’s been six months since The Wall Street Journal launched its “Every journey needs a Journal” ad campaign — its fi rst in 10 years — featuring celebrities, and notably liberal ones at that, such as Sheryl Crow and Susan Sarandon. But readers apparently haven’t seen their last celebrity Journal endorsement. More “waves” of the brand campaign are in the works, with Wynton Marsalis rumored to be among the next up, although a spokesman couldn’t confi rm which notable name will be next. Could it be someone from the Rupert Murdoch side of the political spectrum? The embattled Karl Rove perhaps? After all, Rove did talk at length to The Journal’s editorial page editor Paul Gigot about his plans to resign from the White House in a piece that ran on Monday. Either way, it looks like Platon, who has shot the campaign so far, will continue on as photographer for the foreseeable future. — Amy Wicks

MEMO PADBy Emili Vesilind

BEVERLY HILLS — The Chanel bou-tique on Rodeo Drive will reopen on Wednesday after an eight-month renovation, revealing a feminine new design that pays tribute to the house’s legendary founder, Coco Chanel.

Architect Peter Marino conceptual-ized the design for the 14,700-square-foot store and “was very inspired by Coco Chanel’s apartment in Paris [at 31 Rue Cambon],” said Barbara Cirkva, president of Chanel’s fashion division in the U.S. “One of Peter’s ideas was to bring a residential feel into a retail en-vironment. I think the luxury customer relates to that and understands it.”

Marino’s fi rm also designed most of the store’s furnishings, including a gold leaf-backed glass coffee table and a host of chairs and sofas covered in custom tweed fabrics, a nod to the house’s signature fabric.

The four-story Beverly Hills store is the second highest-performing unit for the company, just behind the 57th Street location in Manhattan.

The unit was renovated with a Peter Marino-de-signed concept five years ago, but since then, “the design of the store concept has evolved,” said Cirkva, “and we felt [that] be-cause Beverly Hills is such a key market in the U.S., it was impor-tant that we incorporate some of the newest ideas into the store. Beverly Hills is really a fl agship city…it’s inter-national and a great tourist mecca.”

Cirkva said the company expects the renovation to signifi cantly impact sales in the store. “We renovated Chicago last year, and since then, the business has been trending up from 30 to over 40 percent every month,” she said. “So we would certainly expect Beverly Hills to have a similar type of response.”

The revamp included a complete reworking of the store’s facade, which wraps around the northeast corner of Rodeo Drive at Brighton Way.

The new storefront is an eye-pop-ping dedication to the iconic black-and-white packaging of the Chanel No.5 fragrance. Blocks of glossy white fake stone are framed by blackened metal in repetitive rectangles. “The box was a very specifi c proportion, and you get the connection [to the fragrance box] between the planes of space,” said Cirkva.

Inside, the new design called for the build-out of the fi rst Chanel fi ne jew-elry and watch department in North America, a 2,460-square-foot space with caste bronze walls and its own separate entrance on Rodeo Drive.

The jewelry boutique leads into a residential-feeling space coined The Salon that features a cozy fi replace-adjacent seating area, a rock crystal chandelier inspired by one found in Chanel’s apartment and the fi rst of six specially commissioned works of art for the store, all of which take inspira-tion from the company’s founder.

In the salon, Flemish artist Johan Creten created a sculpture of a wom-an’s torso covered in camellias — Chanel’s favorite fl ower — in unglazed Sèvres porcelain.

Creten, who was in town for the opening, said the sculpture was in-spired by a female Roman torso on Chanel’s mantel he admired.

French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, who also fl ew in for the occasion, said he took inspiration for his wall-sized Murano glass sculpture from Chanel’s

legendary pearls. The sculpture, which hangs in a window in the second-floor ready-to-wear de-partment, resem-bles a massive string of pearls, rendered in glass-and-crystal and lined in gold leaf.

Pearls were also the inspira-tion for Italian

artist Paola Pivi, who created a wall-mounted 3-D piece using strands of plastic pearls topped with black beads that jut out from the wall.

Three large-scale photographs taken by American artist Alex Soth at a re-cent Chanel haute couture show hang in the store’s fourth-fl oor VIP room, an austere space with a tweed sofa bor-dered by a wraparound terrace.

American artist Peter Dayton created the landscaped panels (featuring camel-lias) in the store’s elevator, while French artist François-Xavier Lalanne crafted a bronze stag in homage to a deer statue he found in Chanel’s apartment.

The concept behind the commis-sioned works “was not just to purchase exciting art,” said Cirkva, “but to have something that was representative of things that were important to [Coco Chanel].”

The boutique also includes the fi rst-ever dedicated department for the brand’s special ultraluxe collection, comprising pieces from the house’s an-nual special collection of artisan-creat-ed pieces, which historically has bowed each fall. The tiny enclave was designed to resemble the inside of a jewelry box and will launch with exotic handbags and luggage, handcrafted footwear and fi ne jewelry, including a $43,000 gold necklace that links together dozens of handblown glass camellias.

The company is in the process of renovating its Palm Beach, Fla., store in a fashion similar to Beverly Hills. That unit is scheduled to make its debut Nov. 1. “We like the idea of having a continuity and certain iconic pieces in the design of every store,” said Cirkva, “but I like that every city has a slightly different twist on the design.”

Chanel will open a second store in Los Angeles this spring on Robertson Boulevard, though the concept has yet to be fi nalized. “We’re constantly look-ing at new projects,” said Cirkva, add-ing that the fashion house has been eyeing Wall Street as a possible future location. “But we don’t feel that Chanel should have 50 stores. We’re in great locations, so it makes more sense to renovate.”

Chanel’s Beverly Hills Revamp

Macy’s Slates Distribution Center in Illinois

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The new facade takes inspiration from the packaging of the Chanel No.5 fragrance.

The new fi ne jewelry and watch department boasts a separate entrance on Rodeo Drive.

WWD.COM4 WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

It was a long weekend for Elie

Tahari, beginning on Saturday with a trip to the hospital. While a construction crew and party staff put the fi nishing touches on his new East Hampton store, Tahari accompanied his wife, Rory, to the emergency room after the injuries she sustained from an earlier horse accident weren’t healing. But a little treatment seemed to go a long way and she was released just in time for the Main Street boutique’s opening soiree.

It certainly wasn’t the kind of relaxing afternoon for which the designer had hoped. Nevertheless, there he stood, gamely greeting well-wishing friends and fans on the second fl oor of the shop as guests fl ooded in downstairs. Debbie Bancroft, receiving kudos for her front-page appearance in the Times that day, mingled among New Yorkers for Children’s Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos and David Yurman. Starlets Sophia Bush and Jill Hennessy came and then snuck out quietly while the rest of the tan, thin and gussied-up guests drank the bar dry long before the 8:30 end time.

Luckily, there was more bubbly at the Taharis’ Southampton estate, where a select group gathered for dinner. Guests supped on poached asparagus and lamb chops before calling it a (long) night. But the festivities didn’t end there for Tahari, who was throwing his children a birthday party the following day. “We’re having it at a horse farm,” he said.

Tahari’s wasn’t the only party on the island this weekend, though. Over in Southampton, Annette Lauer, Alex Kramer and Cristina Cuomo brought their little ones to Hatchlings to celebrate the new Hatch boys’ collection. As the yummy mummies sipped on Bellinis, the kids ran around slurping on gelati and mugging for the cameras.

Michelle My BelleMichelle Pfeiffer once credited Giorgio Armani, to whom she turned for every public appearance, with keeping her off the worst-dressed list. But during her recent red-carpet marathon of “Hairspray” and “Stardust” openings, it seems The Face has stepped outside of her comfort zone. She called on young designers Lela Rose and

Jenni Kayne for two separate occasions, and Rose, for one, was starstruck. “It’s a very classic look,” she said of the white lace dress Pfeiffer chose, “which is what you should wear when you receive your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” Still, for someone whose on-screen look has varied from mobster missus to latex-wearing feline, in real life, Pfeiffer is pretty formulaic: form-fitting, knee-length frocks; artfully tousled hair; natural makeup, and a good pair of peep-toes. Meow.

Horsing Around

NEW YORK — Loss is something Elvis Perkins is all too familiar with. His father, Anthony Perkins, famously creepy as Norman “Psycho” Bates, died from AIDS-related complications on Sept. 12, 1992. And almost nine years to the day, his mother, model-cum-photographer-cum-bon vivant Berry Berenson, boarded a fl ight that would ultimately crash into the World Trade Center. Soon after that day, he began penning songs that over the next six years would evolve into his fi rst album, “Ash Wednesday,” released earlier this year and for which he and his band, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, have been touring exhaustively.

The album’s title itself evokes images of the day after 9/11 when ashes literally and fi guratively settled over New York, but Perkins said the name came from his producer. “I was thinking more obscurely about album titles,” he says. Indeed, he’s a deep thinker on most subjects, offering weighty philosophies about the whys and wherefores of life in general.

Take his own distinctive moniker, for instance. “It’s hard enough to know who one is in this world, and that was, in part, the problem of being named Elvis, because there was this monolith of a person that had already taken the name,” Perkins muses.

His incredible introspection has informed the delicate lyrics of “Ash Wednesday,” an album that swings from heartbreaking to hopeful, garnering him praise as an heir apparent to Bob Dylan. While Dylan tackled the major issues of the day in his canon, so, too, does Perkins, even if that isn’t necessarily his aim. For him, songs are merely his best way of communicating at all, especially when it comes to the loss of his mother.

“I normally let the music talk about it; it’s my best attempt at making any sense of the senseless or what can be understood by people in their right minds,” he begins. “The music in general for me was something of an alternative route to communicating and processing, alternate to what’s available to be known about anything about that day. I didn’t want to hear anything from the President; I didn’t want to hear anything from the media; I didn’t want to hear anything from anybody, really, as none of it was any good.”

Whether the album is cathartic for him, he does not know. Either way, it’s keeping him busy. Having just wrapped up Lollapalooza and the Newport Folk Festival, he and the band are in France. They return this fall to tour with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah before embarking on yet another European stint, after which the band expects to start work on album number two. He has not been in one place for more than two weeks, has not paid rent and has not received snail mail, he says, in over a year.

When asked if all the travel makes him homesick, Perkins gives, of course, a lengthy reply. “I haven’t had time for missing anything. I mean, I miss myself on some deep inherent level because I’m constantly in a different city and don’t really have a sense of home externally and that gets in the way of the sense of internal home. Weeks will go by when I haven’t checked in with myself or I just feel dislocated in some way and worried that I’m broken or something.” He goes on for some time in much the same vein, but it’s best you hear about it for yourself on his next album.

— Nandini D’Souza

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WWD.COM5WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

NEW YORK — Physicians Formula Holdings Inc. experienced a net loss of $523,000, or 4 cents a dilut-ed share, during the second quar-ter due to a noncash charge tied to after-tax, stock-based compen-sation and a onetime secondary equity rights offering. During the same period a year ago, net prof-its were $1.6 million, or 14 cents a diluted share.

Citing softness in consumer spending, the company reported that net sales dipped 4.2 percent to $22.1 million from $23.1 mil-lion in the year-earlier period, and were in line with the com-pany’s outlook. The Azusa, Calif.-based fi rm said the decrease in net sales was primarily due to an increase in cooperative adver-tising spending and markdowns related to planogram resets. The company’s gross sales increased to $33 million from $30 million.

For the fi rst half, net income de-creased to $3.8 million, or 26 cents a diluted share, from $4 million, or 35 cents a share, in the prior year, on net sales that gained to $57.8 million from $50.8 million.

Physicians Formula chief executive offi cer Ingrid Jackel said the tightening of consumer purse strings, a decline in pro-motional prepack orders from a top retail customer and a col-lective move by retailers to trim inventory levels negatively im-pacted the beauty fi rm’s second-quarter results. The company clarifi ed that the change in in-ventory management did not im-pact the brand’s in-store space.

Jackel declared, “The Physicians Formula brand contin-ues to gain masstige market share and to outperform its peers.” For the 52-week period ended July 14, sell-through data at food, drug and mass retailers indicated that Physicians Formula sales gained 15 percent over the year-earlier period, compared to 2 percent growth in the overall premium cat-egory, according to ACNielsen, as provided by Physicians Formula.

Jackel said that beginning in December, the company will begin to ship upcoming products, which are said to include a new line, to U.S. retailers. She also reported that the company’s info-mercial — which will feature a kit of Physicians Formula’s Mineral Wear products along with a $5-off coupon redeemable at retail — will begin in early 2008 provided testing shows the 30-minute spot results in a sales lift at retail. “We think of it as a tool to drive retail sales,” said Jackel, referring to the infomercial.

Due to a change in inventory replenishment patterns and a pullback in consumer spending, the company lowered its full-year forecast. For the fi scal year ended Dec. 31, 2007, the company now anticipates net sales of about $107 million to $111 million, an increase of approximately 12 to 16 percent over the prior year.

— Molly Prior

Acqua di Parma for MenPARMA, Italy — Acqua di Parma, which is nine years shy of its 100th birthday, is set to launch Colonia Intensa, its first eau de cologne for men.

The brand, founded here in 1916, is owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and the Acqua di Parma fragrance port-folio includes the classic unisex colognes Colonia and Colonia

Assoluta, and Iris Nobile, a women’s scent. Gabriella Scarpa, international president of Acqua di Parma, said Colonia Intensa rounds out the collection of fra-grances marketed by the brand.

“We wanted to complete the offer by creating a cologne, its connotations being purely mas-culine,” Scarpa said during an interview.

While Colonia Intensa will be launched in 1,500 doors beginning next month, selected doors will carry the new scent for an exclusive sales preview starting this month. Stores getting the scent this month include the Acqua di Parma bou-

tique in Milan and Bergdorf Goodman in New York. Neiman Marcus stores in Florida will get the scent Aug. 19.

Industry sources estimate fi rst-year retail sales of the scent could hit $20 million worldwide.

Scarpa said she expects the U.S. market to do well, follow-ing sales growth of 50 percent in the U.S. last year compared with 2005. Other key markets for the scent, she noted, will be Italy, the

U.K., Germany, France and Spain.

C o l o n i a Intensa was

blended by perfumer François Demachy, who said he was in-spired by the Mediterranean.

“We used a new scent mole-cule for leather that was recent-ly developed, which has a smell that evokes memories of leather,” Demachy said. The leather note is combined with cedar wood, gaiac wood and patchouli in the scent’s base, while the heart of Colonia Intensa boasts a combination of myrtle, Artemisia and neroli. The scent has top notes of Calabrian bergamot, Sicilian lemon, cardamom and ginger.

Colonia Intensa will be available in two sizes, a 50-ml. ver-sion for $71, and a 100-ml. fl acon for $109. An accompanying bath-and-body line includes aftershave balm, 100 ml. for $67; shampoo and shower gel,

200 ml. for $43, and a deodorant spray, 150 ml. for $37.

The fragrance’s flacon is a reinterpretation of the classic Colonia bottle. It is topped with a bronze-colored cap and bronze rectangular label bearing the

fragrance house’s name, emblem and the scent’s moniker.

Acqua di Parma also has its eye on the spa sector for 2008. The brand will de-velop a spa line from its Blu Mediterraneo line, and will also dip its toe in the spa busi-ness. Together with Spa

Chakra, Acqua di Parma plans to open spas in Italy

and other yet-to-be-named loca-tions in 2008.

— Stephanie Epiro

Physicians Formula Posts Loss

BEAUTY BEAT Colonia Intensa

“the look and spirit of a gamine.” She was married three times (once divorced, twice widowed), lived in ex-otic locales as a child and lavish ones later on, wrote two memoirs (“Patchwork Child: Early Memories” and “Footprints”) and two novels (“The Bluebird Is at Home” and “The Last Blossom on the Plum Tree”), was a magazine editor, had her poetry published in The New Yorker, spoke Chinese before she was 10 and never grad-uated from high school. She read English and French literature and loved to dance.

“Brooke was a great philanthropist, and a great lady, and we’ll not see the likes of her again,” said former fi rst lady Nancy Reagan. “Brooke was very close to my entire family — I’ve known her since I was 14. In fact, when my mother died, Brooke told me, ‘I know no one can replace your mother, Nancy, but I’d like to try.’”

“No one will ever replace her,” said the social his-torian Barbara Goldsmith, a longtime friend of Astor’s. “She was unique because she had a broad vision and she was not at all interested in self-aggrandizement. She was interested in making things better for other people. Something she repeated at almost every speech was the advice her mother gave her: ‘Now Brooke, don’t ever get above yourself.’”

Her life would have seemed charmed to many, but the last few years of it were marred by a sordid squab-ble within her own family over her almost $200 million fortune that spilled into the public arena. In July 2006, one of Astor’s grandsons, Philip Marshall, alleged that his father, Astor’s only child, Anthony Marshall, was mistreating his mother and enriching himself at her expense. (See related article, opposite page.) A judge found the accusations of abuse to be unsubstantiated. However, Anthony Marshall and his wife, Charlene, re-linquished their roles as co-executors of Astor’s estate — reported to be a $130 million personal fortune and a trust said to be worth $60 million left by her late hus-band, Vincent Astor — as part of a settlement. Her long-time friend, Annette de la Renta, became a co-executor of her estate, helping to ensure Astor spent the last year of her life — much of it spent at her 68-acre estate in Westchester, N.Y. — surrounded by her dogs, gardens and other things she loved.

As the city’s most infl uential philanthropist, Astor gave away almost $200 million to New York institutions and inhabitants over a 38-year period. The money came from the Vincent Astor Foundation, a trust established in 1948. When Vincent Astor died, in 1959, he left her in charge. His instructions were simple: Use the money “for the alleviation of human misery” and “have a hell of a lot of fun doing it.”

Until 1997, when she dissolved the foundation after fi nally disbursing all its assets, she did both. And in the tributes to her Monday, it was at times diffi cult to pin-

point which of her characteristics would be remembered most. Many pointed to her charitable work, others to her sense of humor and still others to her coquettishness.

“She was the biggest fl irt I ever knew — even in old age,” said John B. Fairchild, former editorial di-rector and chairman of Fairchild Publications and currently contribut-ing editor at large to WWD. “I remem-ber once having dinner in a restaurant where she was having dinner with Freddie Melhado and a group of other men and I said to her, ‘What are you doing with all those old men?’ And she shot back, ‘Show me the pictures of the young ones.’”

Aileen Mehle, also known as the columnist Suzy, recalled once calling Astor up for lunch and instead joking the duo go to a bar and pick up sailors. “She burst into laughter. I thought she would never stop. She was just adorable and she was a man’s woman. She was also a woman’s woman, but she just thought men were more fun. And she was absolutely a fl irt. You don’t see too many of those anymore. I don’t mean she batted her eyelashes, but she certainly gave

them 100 percent of her attention.”“She was a great lady and made a tremendous con-

tribution to our country and especially to New York,” said Henry Kissinger, who fi rst met Astor when he was Secretary of State in the Nixon administration and later

took a trip with her to the Middle East. “It was in 1981 or 1982. She was an enormous amount of fun to be with. We went to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Morocco. She was indefatigable.”

Her energy and enthusiasm were often greater than those of people half her age. As she approached 90, Astor said that she’d cut down on her enter-taining, which meant she was giving a dinner for 20 only about once a month. At the time, Oscar de la Renta de-scribed her as “my youngest friend,” adding she had even done the lam-bada. “When we were down in Santo

Domingo, she was very curious about it, so she tried it,” he said. “She was fabulous.”

Charles Masson, owner of Le Grenouille, where Astor dined regularly, recalled once visiting her in Maine. “We

Continued on page 8

Continued from page one

The ‘Wonderful Life’ 6

Brooke Astor in the

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Oscar de la Renta, Astor and Nancy Reagan in 1988.

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likes of her again. ” — Nancy Reagan

WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

WWD.COM

By Mort Sheinman

When Brooke Astor’s name flared into the headlines in July 2006,

many people didn’t even realize the great lady was still alive.

She had, after all, celebrated her 100th birthday more than four years earlier, and then virtually disap-peared.

But when it was revealed her only child, Anthony Marshall, then 82, had been charged in court papers of mis-treating his mother and enriching himself and his wife at her expense, it launched a cascade of coverage — all captivated by the battle over her al-most $200 million fortune.

Almost as scandalous as the al-legations themselves was that they were made by Philip Marshall, one of Anthony’s twin sons. Young Marshall accused his father of abuses that ranged from skimping on Astor’s med-ications to selling off some of her fa-vorite pieces of art to downsizing the number of aides who looked after her.

Anthony Marshall was also alleged to have invested his mother’s money into his own theatrical production company. Philip asked that his father be removed as Astor’s legal guardian and replaced by his grandmother’s longtime friend Annette de la Renta and the bank J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

For months, charges and coun-tercharges were made almost daily, at times by some of New York’s most aristocratic names. Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller joined de la Renta in offering affi davits support-ing Philip’s accusations against his father.

Days after those accusations were made, New York State Supreme Court Judge John E.H. Stackhouse appoint-ed de la Renta and J.P. Morgan Chase as Astor’s temporary guardians, an arrangement that became permanent under terms of a settlement reached in mid-October.

Although the mainstream press provided ample coverage — The New York Times alone published close to 30 major articles on the affair be-

tween July 27, 2006, and mid-October — it was a story with enough sordid aspects to ensure equal space in the tabloids. Little of it concerned the ac-tions of Astor herself, focusing instead on the behavior of her relatives and the lawyers they hired, all of it so at odds with the discretion and dignity usually associated with Brooke Astor.

There was, for example, the accu-sation — never proven — that because her bedroom was too chilly, Astor had been forced by her son to sleep on a couch soiled by urine from her pet dogs, Boysie and Girlsie.

Then there was the matter of Marshall’s second marriage and the infl uence of his new wife, Charlene, on the disposition of some Astor assets: a painting by Childe Hassam, worth millions and said to be one of Astor’s favorites, that wound up in the col-lection of the Dallas Museum of Art, and a compound in Northeast Harbor, Maine, that became Charlene’s prop-erty in 2003.

It was in Northeast Harbor, one of Astor’s favorite vacation spots, that Marshall met Charlene, then the wife of a local minister. In 1992, shortly after Marshall divorced his fi rst wife, Charlene abandoned her husband and ran off with Marshall, a man 21 years her senior. It was a major scandal in that little New England community and a deep source of embarrassment for Astor.

Marshall — who had been a com-bat Marine, a CIA offi cer and a U.S. ambassador, and went on to become a Tony-award-winning Broadway pro-ducer — denied any improprieties toward his mother. He said he loved her and he defended moving some $900,000 of her money into Delphi Productions, his theater company, as an act she approved.

Those investments began in 2003, the year Astor was hospitalized after breaking her hip. Her health spiraled downward from then on.

Shortly after Philip’s allegations became public, the New York State Attorney General’s offi ce began asking

Brooke Astor was always eminently quotable. Here are some thoughts she shared with WWD over the years.

On sincerity: “I’ve learned to look for the way people think by the way that they articulate and the look in their eyes. A sense of humor and good manners are very important to me, particularly humor. Manners can be acquired easily enough. I’ve also found that many people who laugh loudly often have no sense of humor.”

On her age (in 1991): “I couldn’t care less about turning 90. Except I don’t like it when somebody wants to help me over every 2-inch curb.”

On longevity: “Discipline — in every way. You can have fun, but don’t eat so much, don’t drink so much, don’t go dancing so much. Flirt a little, but don’t get too involved.”

On cosmetic surgery: “Facelifts are a mistake. People pull their faces back so much that suddenly they’re all nose. And you can’t push your nose back or cut it off on the side. But I do think the plastic men are getting better.”

On New York: “I go out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. But I don’t see the same people. That’s the great thing about New York. You can meet any sort of person you want to. If I lived in Grosse Pointe [Mich.], I’d see 10 people. Here, I have hundreds that I know well. And I don’t have to belong to any particular group.”

On being a hostess: “I have defi nite ideas about entertainment. I believe in drawing out everyone on certain subjects before letting a party break up into smaller groups. My parties frequently start out as roundtable discussions.”

On socializing: “I do like to get out at night and talk to those who are good thinkers.”

On developing projects in low-income areas: “We like to work with young people. It was Lady Allen of Hurtwood who impressed me with the importance of playgrounds in a community. It seems that when you have nothing…there is a greater temptation to throw something through a window. I think there is a greater problem with young girls in a troubled community than there is with boys. Boys generally have a wider range of interests. Girls are usually interested in nothing more than attracting boys.”

On clarity: “My grandson has been through college, but he writes as if he has just come out of junior high school. It’s becoming more obvious that schools are not teaching children how to write. Michael Collins, the astronaut, was right when he said that communications between the Earth and the moon were better than the memos he had to deal with after coming back to Earth.” Her offi ce at the time included numerous awards. One she took a perverse pleasure in showing off cited the Foundation “for Intelectual [sic] Achievements.”

On school buildings without windows: “There is nowhere to look. You might say that it prevents students from daydreaming. But daydreaming is very important for young people.”

On money: “Money is like manure. It should be spread around.”

of Brooke Astor

A Controversy Goes Public

In Her Words

Continued on page 9

Astor with Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson in 1969.

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spent the entire time hiking. Now, I’ve run a few mara-thons, but she had such extraordinary energy it was hard to keep up. She was incredible.”

The secret of her stamina and longevity, Astor told W in 1991, was, “Discipline, in every way. You can have fun, but don’t eat so much, don’t drink so much. Flirt a little, but don’t get too involved.”

As for her youthful look, she admitted to once having had her neck done, but said, “Face-lifts are a mistake. People pull their faces so much that suddenly they’re all nose. And you can’t push your nose back or cut it off on the side.”

Two things that had changed since she was young, she noted, were people’s manners — and their will-ingness to talk about money. “In my day, how much money you had was not something you discussed.” At a dinner party, she added, “Even if you’re sitting next to two dreadful bores, you’ve got to be nice. They’re your hostess’ friends. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have put them there. People who like other people will always be nice.”

The real crux of the matter, however, as she put it, was that in recent years, “A lot of people here have lost their sense of humor. That’s why I like England. They’re

still laughing there — at themselves, too. We don’t laugh at ourselves.” That’s not a problem Astor, who once de-scribed herself as having “the fi nancial sense of a gnat,” ever had.

She was born Roberta Brooke Russell in Portsmouth, N.H., on March 30, 1902 — an Easter Sunday — the only child of Maj. Gen. John H. Russell, a Marine Corps com-mandant, and his wife, Mabel. Russell’s postings took him far and wide and young Brooke spent her childhood in Hawaii, Panama, Santo Domingo and Peking. From her father, she learned the value of self-discipline. Her mother taught her something else.

“It was my mother who sparked my interest in litera-ture,” she told WWD in 1976. “She always read the best books and she got me interested in Stendhal. She told me that I should never come to the table unless I had something to say.”

Because her schooling was provided mainly by a suc-cession of governesses, except for a year at a British school in what was then known as Peking (Beijing), and because her father’s peripatetic career kept her on the go, what she had to say was revealed mostly to her diary, a record she began keeping at the age of seven. She had a second brush with formal education when the family settled in Washington. She was enrolled in Miss

Madeira’s, an elite secondary school, but was pulled out and taken to Santo Domingo. Astor recalled the occasion for WWD in 1991: “I revered Miss Madeira, but mother took me out when I wanted to learn Greek and Latin. She thought I would become a bluestocking — a bore and not attractive, someone who wouldn’t fl irt at all.”

If it was Mabel Russell’s intention to marry her daughter off, she succeeded. The family returned to Washington and Brooke was invited to a Princeton University prom, where she met a wealthy young grad named J. Dryden Kuser. They married. She was 16. Kuser turned out to be a drunken lout who cheated on her, broke her jaw and then divorced her. He later had a forgettable career as a New Jersey state senator.

During the 10-year marriage, she began writing pro-fessionally, providing book reviews for Vogue. She also joined the boards of local charities. The union pro-duced her only child, Anthony, who survives her, as do twin grandsons Alexander and Philip Marshall. When Anthony enlisted in the Marines, he took the surname of his stepfather, Astor’s second husband, because he admired him so.

That was Charles “Buddie” Marshall, a stockbroker. After her divorce from Kuser, Astor moved to New York and began exchanging letters with Marshall, whose marriage had also dissolved. They had initially met one morning while riding to hounds, each of them still mar-ried to their fi rst spouses. They wed in 1932, then bought a house in Westbury, Long Island, and a penthouse at 10 Gracie Square in Manhattan.

Buddie Marshall, she wrote years later, was the love of her life, everything her fi rst husband was not. They honeymooned in Europe, dined with the Cole Porters in Paris and bought a small castle in Portofi no, Italy, where they summered with a red-brown dachshund named Fafner. She traveled extensively, wrote for Town & Country, did some editing for House & Garden and hosted a writing workshop whose participants included Arthur Krock of The New York Times shortly before he went off to head the newspaper’s Washington bureau and become one of its most powerful political colum-nists. After World War II, during which she served as a USO hostess, a Red Cross Gray Lady and an assistant in an army library, she became features editor of House & Garden. (In 1991, she contributed a piece to H&G about Fafner, and in her 90s wrote a series of articles for Vanity Fair. Aimee Bell, who edited her there, recalled Astor’s wicked sense of humor and, of course, her end-less fl irting with editor in chief Graydon Carter.)

The bliss of her second marriage was shattered on Thanksgiving Day 1952, when Marshall had a heart attack in the weekend home they had acquired in Tyringham, Mass. He died in her arms.

At around that time, Vincent Astor, then 62, was be-coming a single man again. Within a year, he would be-come her third husband. He’d already been married and divorced and now his second marriage, to the for-mer Mary Benedict “Minnie” Cushing, was breaking up. According to reports, Astor was a persistent pursuer of the widow Marshall, plying her with a fl ood of love notes, sometimes as many as fi ve a day. He called her Pookie. They were wed in October 1953 and led quiet lives.

“We never saw anybody,” she told the Times in 1984. “We would have dinner together, all dressed up. I used to get blue when I thought of all my friends going out.”

He might not have been the most engaging of men, but Vincent Astor was, in the words of Derek Wilson, his family biographer, “a hitherto unknown phenomenon in America: an Astor with a highly developed social con-science.”

When he was 20 and a student at Harvard University, his father, John Jacob Astor IV, went down with the Titanic, leaving young Vincent some $200 million. Astor dropped out of Harvard and began to do something few of his forbearers had done: use his money for the public good. He sold off the family’s slum housing — the source of much of its money — and invested in reputable enter-prises. He established the trust that was to be his legacy and Brooke Astor’s glory.

On Feb. 3, 1959, Vincent Astor died. Although he was married to Brooke Astor for less than six years, he left her his entire fortune: some $2 million outright, $65 million worth of investments and control of the Vincent Astor Foundation, whose assets were also close to $65 million. He had no children of his own, but others in his family bitterly contested the will. It was ruled valid and it changed Brooke Astor’s life — as well as the life of the city around her.

That she kept her donations within the fi ve boroughs of New York was no accident. She felt that because the Astor fortune was amassed primarily through real es-tate dealings in the city, the money should be channeled back to the city.

Astor gave generously to what she called New York’s “crown jewels,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which received about $17 million, which helped create the Chinese Garden Court; the Rockefeller Institute, which got about $9 million; the New York Public Library, the biggest benefi ciary, getting close to $30 million; the Pierpont Morgan Library, which received $2 million, and the Bronx Zoo, where she underwrote the Wild Asia exhibit. In 1982, the New York Zoological Society decid-ed to name its baby elephant Astor in her honor, some-thing she found funny. “Astor’s keepers tell me he’s the only elephant who stands on his head,” she said. That its namesake was a lifelong Republican appeared to be entirely coincidental.

In 1983, she resigned from the boards of most of the other high-profi le institutions she was affi liated with to concentrate on the Public Library, then going through a fi scal crisis, which it weathered, thanks in part to her help. And she often set precedents with her giving. Bill Blass, for example, pledged $6 million to the Public Library in the late Eighties, citing her generosity as his example.

“When she waves her approving scepter over a social event, it is automatically blessed,” reported WWD.

Other institutions she supported included the American Museum of Natural History, New York University, Central Park, Carnegie Hall, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Morgan Library and the South Street Seaport.

Astor funds also found their way to grittier parts of town. They provided seed money to launch an attack on blight in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant. United

Brooke Astor Dies at 105

“She was absolutely a fl irt. You don’t see too many of those

anymore. ” — Aileen Mehle, also known as Suzy

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Astor at a Bronx Zoo party in 1987.

Astor at a Henry Street Settlement gala, 1987.

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Neighborhood Houses of New York was granted $1 mil-lion in 1961 for a three-year project involving settlement houses in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Pocket parks, which Astor called “outdoor living rooms,” were developed in Harlem and the Lower East Side to brighten public hous-ing that until then had all the charm of Attica cellblocks. The trust also supported such agencies as Coalition for the Homeless, the St. Francis Friends of the Poor and the Animal Medical Center.

Her philanthropic contributions garnered her many honors. In 1988, Ronald Reagan gave her the Presidential Citizen’s Medal; a decade later, Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Not content to sit and sign the checks in her Park Avenue apartment — or at Holly Hill, her estate in Westchester, or her home in Maine — Astor was a fre-quent visitor to the hospitals, homeless shelters and slums she tried to help. And for years she toured those areas in taxis, expressing immense pleasure when cab drivers would recognize her.

“She went to every place before she made a gift, no matter how obscure the place and no matter where it was in the fi ve boroughs,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library. “It might have been a residen-cy for pregnant teenagers or a place that provided furni-ture for the disadvantaged. But she always went and she was always impeccably attired because that’s what she thought was expected of her. It wasn’t fl ashy or fl amboy-ant; it was just good taste, the way she conducted herself and her business.”

As she explained to The New York Times in 1980: “If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jew-elry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them.”

In the end, Astor was a living refuta-tion of the oft-quoted adage attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “There are no second acts in American lives.” For 40 years, she was both New York’s most famous philanthropist and the undis-puted queen of society — two roles that, as Andrew Carnegie’s wife could have told you, don’t always go hand in hand. That had more than a little to do with the Astor name and the money her third husband left her and his foundation.

But it also had plenty to do with Brooke’s charm, sense of humor and natural authority. Astor perhaps summed her life up best when, in a 1980 interview about her memoir “Footprints,” she described it as “the development of a foolish young girl into a public monument.”

— With contributions from WWD staff

questions about a charitable organization called Shepherd Community Foundation. Formed in 2002, it had never registered with the state but gave as one of its ad-dresses the Manhattan home of the Marshalls.

Shepherd’s primary contact was listed as Francis X. Morrissey Jr., a lawyer with a troublesome track record. Morrissey, who was once suspended from prac-ticing law because he mishandled a client’s money and who had been accused of taking advantage of other elderly clients, was hired by Marshall in 2003 to oversee Astor’s fi nancial matters. He is on the board of Marshall’s theater company.

Finally, in December 2006, Marshall was given some measure of absolution. Amid a lengthy document about lawyers’ fees for the case, Judge Stackhouse ruled that the allegations of neglect and chicanery against Marshall were “not substantiated.” His ruling came two months after Anthony and Charlene Marshall, under a settlement, relinquished their positions as co-executors of Astor’s estate. Under that agreement, any future legal action concerning Marshall’s handling of his mother’s fi nances were to be handled in Surrogate’s Court after Astor’s death

and left to the discretion of an executor.Still to be resolved, however, was the question of whether Astor’s signature

on a revised will in 2004 was forged, a matter that was being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney’s offi ce, and whether she was mentally competent at the time.

Earlier this summer, The New York Times printed details of Astor’s will — which she signed on Jan. 30, 2002 — for a personal fortune estimated at about $130 million, as well as a trust left to her by her husband, Vincent, that was es-timated at another $60 million. According to the Times, the will stipulated that she be buried next to her late husband and that her gravestone read, “I had a wonderful life.”

While Astor naturally bequeathed millions to many of the New York institu-tions she loved — from the New York Public Library to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to New York public school teachers — the public was most fascinated by the individuals named in it. Despite the drama surrounding the document, her son Anthony was left the bulk of her fortune, as well as artworks and any funds raised from the sales of her New York City apartment and her 65-acre estate in Westchester, the Times article said.

De la Renta, according to the report, was given four dog paintings; Freddie Melhado two cache pots, and Rockefeller a stone Buddha head sculpture.

A Controversy Goes PublicContinued from page 7

Anita Loos, Lillian Gish and Astor at a 1976 party.

Astor dances with Howard

Baker at Forbes Magazine’s 70th

anniversary party, 1987.

Astor with Mary Beame and Lady Bird Johnson in the Seventies.

Astor with Vartan

Gregorian at the 1987

Literary Lions awards.

Astor reading to school children at the New York Public Library in 1989.

Astor and Malcolm Forbes, 1986.

Henry Kissinger and Astor in 1981.

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Astor and Henry Kissinger, 1990.

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WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

10 WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007WWD.COM

In Transit

Security, Infrastructure Focus of New LegislationBy Kristi Ellis

WASHINGTON — Congress took several legislative steps to improve the nation’s complex and aging network of highways, railways and ports before it adjourned for the August recess, leaving retailers concerned about cost and implementation, but port au-thorities pleased about funding for security programs.

In the fresh round of legislation, Congress consid-ered three bills designed to strengthen security and improve the infrastructure of the overworked trans-portation system.

The House passed two spending bills — one to fund the Department of Homeland Security that would boost federal grants for port security programs and a second funding programs at the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for highway improvements. The Senate has not taken up either spending bill and President Bush has vowed to veto both of them because they exceed the spending limit in his budget request blueprint for fi scal year 2008 that begins on Oct. 1.

Bush signed one of the three bills into law, imple-menting many of the security recommendations of the 9/11 commission and also requiring that 100 percent of all U.S.-bound cargo containers be scanned at foreign ports within fi ve years.

Improving the transportation system has become an issue in the 2008 presidential race, in the wake of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis in which nine people are known to have died.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.), the front-runner in polls for the Democratic party’s nomination, outlined a comprehensive infrastructure improvement plan on Wednesday in New Hampshire. Clinton said if she were elected president, she would propose spending $10 billion over 10 years to repair and upgrade roads, bridges and seaports. The senator said she would increase the budget for the DOT’s conges-tion reduction programs by nearly 50 percent to $600 million a year.

“The degradation of our infrastructure isn’t just a serious threat to our safety; it is also a grave threat to our economy,” Clinton said.

She also proposed to create a national policy for ports, which she said are “in substandard con-dition,” and address congestion at the major ter-minals with state and local governments and the private sector.

The House-passed budget proposal for the DOT for fi scal year 2008 would authorize $50.7 billion in discretionary spending, which is $4 billion more than enacted last year and $2.8 billion more than Bush requested. Highway improvement programs would receive $40.2 billion, which is $1.25 billion more than enacted last year and $631,000 more than Bush requested.

“Highway congestion is steadily increasing be-cause use is outstripping capacity,” said Erik Autor, vice president and international trade counsel at the National Retail Federation. “The current fund-ing level is not even able to keep up with maintaining the current infrastructure, let alone build new infrastructure.”

Autor said the Minneapolis bridge collapse could change the debate over the need for a national transportation policy.

Congress, which passed a multibillion-dollar highway bill in 2005 for an upgrade of the transportation system, has tapped the private sector for ideas on how it can fund the expansion of the nation’s highways, railways and ports, and mitigate the impact on commercial users.

President Bush, in a national press conference Thursday, said he was against rais-ing the federal gasoline tax to repair bridges until Congress changes the way it funds highway repairs.

Some experts have considered revenues from toll roads to pay for much-needed expansions, but many businesses, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has thousands of trucks on the road, claim the tolls it pays translate into a direct cost to the company and consumers.

More than 19 billion tons of freight, valued at $13 trillion, was carried over 4.4 trillion ton-miles in the U.S. in 2002, according to the DOT. In less than 20 years, the nation’s freight tonnage is projected to increase 70 percent, which transportation ex-perts say is a recipe for a freight-capacity crisis, since highway capacity is expanding too slowly. Bottlenecks lead to signifi cant shipping delays, totaling about 243 million

hours annually, costing direct users $7.8 billion annually, according to government fi gures.

As part of the House-passed transportation spending bill, legislators approved an amend-ment offered by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) that would prohibit the use of funds to establish a cross-border pilot project to allow Mexican-based motor carriers to operate beyond the commercial zones in the U.S., dealing a setback to a program Bush has tried to implement for years.

Cross-border trucking between Mexico and the U.S., a stipulation in the North American Free Trade Agreement enacted in 1994, has been held up for years by legal challenges, safety concerns over substandard Mexican trucks and fi erce op-position from the Teamsters Union.

For importers, which brought in $6.06 billion worth of apparel and textiles from Mexico for the year ending May 31, the program allowing Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways beyond a 20-mile zone would have been benefi cial, but industry executives have all but given up hope on it.

“It would have been helpful to those compa-nies operating in Mexico,” said Nate Herman, director of international trade at the American Apparel & Footwear Association. “Right now, when people bring in apparel from Mexico, it gets to within 20 miles of the border and is un-loaded from a Mexican truck and reloaded onto a U.S. truck. So, you’ve lost time and there are extra costs.”

Herman said the security of the shipment could be potentially compromised as well under the current system.

While many industry associations were un-satisfi ed with the two bills, port authorities were

sanguine about a third bill Congress acted on before the recess.The Senate passed a $37.6 billion Homeland Security spending bill that would

give ports $400 million in federal grants in fi scal year 2008 for security measures to help prevent terrorist attacks. The bill must now be reconciled with a House-passed spending bill in conference.

The action in Congress would close a funding gap, according to port authorities, who have argued the federal Port Security Grant Program, established in 2002, is underfunded.

Despite repeated calls from the port authorities to increase the funding to $400 million annually, Bush’s budget request for fi scal year 2008 proposed $210 million for the grant program, which was the same request level in fi scal year 2007.

Democrats now in control of Congress claim they are “fi xing” the “oversight” by Bush with their budget increase. The House would also increase the funding for the grant program to $400 million.

“We are thankful for additional money,” said a spokesman for the American Association of Port Authorities, in an interview with WWD in May. “The ports have been living hand to mouth on the meager port facility fund grants they have been receiving…and unfortunately they have, in large part, either had to forgo a lot of proj-ects they felt they needed or they had to divert money from other things, such as im-provements at their terminals.”

“The degradation of our

infrastructure isn’t just a serious

threat to our safety; it is also a

grave threat to our economy. ” — Sen. Hillary Clinton

Sen. Hillary Clinton has outlined a new infrastructure improvement plan as part of her presidential campaign.

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The bridge collapse in Minneapolis drew attention to the need for improvements in the transportation system.

The bridge collapse in Minneapolis drew attention to the need for improvements in the transportation system.

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12 WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007WWD.COM

In Transit

APL Introduces Suez Express ServiceBy Ross Tucker

NEW YORK — Ocean carrier APL is looking to the Suez Canal to provide alternatives to the congestion and continual threat of strikes at West Coast ports.

The New York Container Terminal Inc. in Staten Island will welcome the 903-foot contain-ership President Adams on Friday, the fi rst vessel in APL’s new Suez Express service. The new route allows ships to make the run from Singapore through the Suez Canal to New York in 21 days. APL has put eight ships capable of carrying be-tween 4,000 and 4,500 20-foot equivalent units, or TEU — the standard maritime industry measure-ment used to count cargo — on the new route.

Bob Sappio, an APL senior vice president and head of trans-Pacifi c trade services, said the need for alternatives to bringing in goods through West Coast ports, particularly the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., will only increase as trade volumes rise.

“West Coast ports continue to be challenged with growing volumes and an infra-structure that continues to have problems coping with that growth,” said Sappio.

He acknowledged that while trade from Asia continues to grow, the increases have moderated. The National Retail Federation’s monthly Port Tracker report said con-gestion at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was currently low, but noted the nation’s major ports would handle record levels of container traffi c in August. While the ports may be handling the volume, Sappio said the truck and rail infra-structures responsible for moving the goods across the country are still facing con-siderable problems.

“Velocity of the railroads has certainly been less than stellar,” said Sappio. “We continue to struggle with getting cargo across the country intermodally.”

Strikes and lockouts have been another concern. In 2002, a labor dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and port operators shut down 29 major ports along the West Coast for 11 days and was estimated to have cost billions of dollars. Another strike at Los Angeles/Long Beach was narrowly avoided in July 2004 when the dockworkers union and major shipping lines reached an agreement to hire an additional 2,000 nonunion workers to handle the rising traffi c. A strike at Los

Angeles/Long Beach was averted at the end of last month after almost two weeks of negotia-tions between the 930-member Offi ce Clerical Unit of Local 63, a division of the ILWU, and 14 shipping companies to reach a new three-year contract. For every day the ports are shut down, it takes about a week to recover, accord-ing to Sappio, who noted the ILWU contract is up for renewal in 2008.

“We never know with any certainty just how those things are going to play out,” he said. “In 2002, things were quite messy.”

The popular alternative to using West Coast ports has been taking advantage of the Panama Canal to bring goods into the country via the East Coast. According to Sappio, about 78 per-cent of cargo from Asia enters through the West Coast. The majority of the remaining 22 per-cent makes its way to the East Coast through the Panama Canal. But that, too, is facing seri-ous issues with congestion and expansion proj-ects aren’t likely to be completed until 2014 or

2015. The Suez Canal, on the other hand, faces considerably less congestion.East Coast ports are reaping the benefi ts of those seeking to mitigate their depen-

dence on the West Coast. Container traffi c at the Port of New York and New Jersey has skyrocketed over the last 15 years. According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, container traffi c rose 173 percent to 5.1 million TEU in 2006 compared with 1.9 million TEU in 1991. Imports of loaded containers has also been on the rise. In 2006, loaded imports rose 7.9 percent to 2.6 million TEU from 2.4 million TEU in 2005.

APL’s new service also positions the carrier to take advantage of several of the world’s emerging sourcing destinations. The new service includes stops in places such as Chennai in India, Colombo in Sri Lanka and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. For each location, the transit time to the East Coast runs between 21 and 25 days.

“As places like India, Indonesia and Thailand take off, we are seeing a need for more capabilities and service offerings from this area,” said Sappio.

An expanded Panama Canal and using the Suez will provide only “partial answers” to those moving goods into the country, said Sappio.

“Despite what you do through the Panama or Suez canals, or other West Coast gate-ways, Los Angeles has to work,” he said.

Ships on the new route travel from Singapore through the Suez Canal to New York in 21 days.

From Central America to the heart of America in only 6 days. That’s Crowley’s Speed to Market.

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Why go with Crowley’s Speed to Market? We offer thefastest transit times, plus 9 weekly sailings betweenCentral America and the U.S. Gulf and East Coasts – so no one gets you there and back quicker or moreoften. We serve multiple ports throughout the regionand the U.S. Our distribution centers provide a widerange of warehousing services. And our extensivetransportation management services mean you havethe convenience of using one company for all yourshipping needs – by air, land and sea.

Take your supply chain operation to a new level ofefficiency with Crowley’s Speed to Market. For moreinformation, call 1-800-CROWLEYor visit www.crowley.com.

WWD.COM13WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

Textile & Trade Report

By Court Williams

NEW YORK — Exhibitors at last week’s Direction and Printsource textile de-sign shows here found buyers breaking away from the traditional and on the hunt for seasonal favorites that had been updated with modern touches.

At Direction, geometric and fl oral ikats were among the bestsellers at Marilyn Kern Textile Designs.

“Supergraphics saw their heyday,” said Marilyn Kern. “This season, people really favored unique, small geometrics and soft fl orals.”

At Printsource, Tag Sale Textiles saw similar trends in textural “no-print” prints.“Small scrolls and medallions performed very well,” said Wendy Greenberg,

Tag Sale’s owner. “The most successful pieces, though, had the appearance of a texture instead of a pattern.”

On the color front, gray proved to be a prominent feature of many collec-tions and was sought after by buyers.

“Gray is wonderful for solids on cashmere and wool, but it’s a hard color story to work into prints,” said Kern.

She and several other vendors did manage to use the color in their cre-ations by bringing in strong acid tones. Bright hues were carried over from spring and added to prints that usually feature fall’s brown and gray palettes. The response to this combination of posh and punch resonated with buyers.

“It seems to be the way designs are colored that brings freshness this sea-son,” said Nadia Reisfeld, owner of NR Designs. “People gravitated toward simple patterns with hits of color.”

At Direction, Reisfeld’s customers scooped up monotone prints and sophis-ticated designs that incorporated defi ned splashes of bright color.

“One of our biggest challenges was to turn our backs on the traditional fall palette,” said Paul Brewster of Brewster Ltd. “We mixed a lot of ‘high-summer’ colors in with our classic neutrals this season.”

The new palette wasn’t the only challenge exhibitors faced this season. An early morning torrential downpour on the second day of the show crippled the city’s transit system and, consequently, put a dent into traffi c. The breadth of offerings on display was also overwhelming to vendors and their customers.

“There doesn’t seem to be one or two really big trends these last few sea-sons,” said Reisfeld.

Samantha Cortes of Fashion Design Concepts said, “There is so much avail-able, it was diffi cult dividing everything into categories. It’s hard getting a point across to the market.”

The burden is especially hard on the large vintage presence at Printsource.“There are vintage pieces that customers always ask for that are

not trend-driven,” said Greenberg. “Not everyone can have them all at the show along with all the popular pieces.”

Presenting unique product was the key to standing out, according to Brewster.

“Trends, no matter how many there are, always need to progress,” he said. “It’s all about the new.”

A Touch of Summer at N.Y. Print Shows

By Evan Clark

WASHINGTON — Turning to the safeguard provision of the Central American Free Trade Agreement for the fi rst time, the Bush administration will consider imposing tariffs on imports of socks from Honduras.

The safeguard provision is designed to help domestic pro-ducers when the elimination of duties under CAFTA results in an import surge that causes “serious damage” or a threat to companies making competing products. According to International Development Systems, Honduras was the third largest importer of cotton socks to the U.S. for the 12 months ended May 31, with a 54 percent increase in shipments to 18.4 million dozen pairs, valued at $70 million.

Tariffs from Honduras, which were eliminated when CAFTA went into effect in March 2006, could rise to as much as 18.8 percent and last for three years. CAFTA also includes El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Costa Rica is also part of the accord, but has yet to ratify it.

The Commerce Department, which chairs the interagency Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements, plans to release an offi cial notice soon requesting public com-ments on the issue, said a spokesman. The issue will likely take months to be decided.

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R., Ala.), who pushed for protections for the U.S. socks industry during the 2005 CAFTA debate, wel-comed the decision.

“Imports have been on the rise while domestic production has declined,” Aderholt said in a statement. “A sock safeguard represents one way to ensure that our manufacturers are given an opportunity to adjust to new market conditions and compete on a level playing fi eld.”

Julia Hughes, senior vice president of international trade for the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel, called the decision “precedent-setting.”

“For retailers and importers who are weighing whether to place orders in the CAFTA region or not, this sends a bit of a chill,” said Hughes. “It’s kind of standard language [for trade agreements] that’s never been used before. If it’s successful in this case, there may be other domestic producers who might be interested in trying to use it against other products.”

Honduras Facing Socks Tariff

Brewster’s polyester print at Direction.

A silk print from Tag Sale

Textiles at Printsource.

WWD.COM14 WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

By Evan Clark

WASHINGTON — July sales at apparel and accessories stores rose a season-ally adjusted 1.3 percent versus June as department stores posted a 1.6 percent increase.

Against a year earlier, sales at appar-el and accessories stores advanced 5.8 percent last month to $19.1 billion, as department stores tallied growth of 1.2 percent to $17.7 billion, according to the Commerce Department’s monthly report on sales released Monday.

On the broader front, July sales at all retail and food service establishments expanded by a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent, compared with the preced-ing month. Overall sales fell a season-ally adjusted 0.7 percent during June, but were up 1.3 percent for the three months ended July 31.

“We’re off to a slow start, but a posi-tive one nevertheless,” said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research Corp., who described July as a “quirky month” since some stores have started back-to-school sales while oth-

ers wait until August.“We’re really going to have to wait an-

other month until we see the consumer really come out,” said Yamarone, noting gasoline prices have been inching down and that employment is strong.

It is unclear whether the stock mar-ket’s recent yo-yoing will cause consum-ers, who have been propping up the economy, to change their spending habits. Yamarone argued employment is far more important to consumer spending than fl uctuations in the fi nancial markets.

“Consumers rarely care about what’s going on in the stock market,” said Yamarone.

The U.S. economy added a less-than-anticipated 92,000 jobs in July, though wages for the month were 3.9 percent

higher than a year earlier, helping to support spending.

Still, the movement in the market has been dramatic and if investors lost their appetite for companies that extend loans to consumers, shoppers who depend on credit to spend could be restrained.

“At this point, it is too early to assess the impact of recent market volatility and tighter credit conditions generally on consumer spending momentum,” said Brian Bethune, U.S. economist with Global Insight. “But we will have to wait until the end of this month to get an idea as to whether tighter credit conditions are starting to have any material impact on spending. For now, the fundamentals supporting consumer spending still look fairly solid.”

Retail Sales Rise in July

By WWD Staff

Monday was a tough day to be trading stocks.Concerns over consumer spending, the impact of the

ongoing housing slump and last week’s weaker-than-expect-ed same-store sales report had the market in a tizzy. After the dust settled, the major indices had pretty much closed the day fl at while the retail sector was up slightly.

Bits of good news had triggered a spike in stock prices earlier in the day: The Federal Reserve added another $2 billion of liquidity to the fi nancial markets.

The move was part of a strategy aimed at quelling wor-ries that the subprime mortgage problems would infect other lending products in the market. The Federal Reserve and the world’s central banks already have infused the fi nancial markets with more than $400 billion in liquidity.

In the retail sector, investors picked over a “strong buy” upgrade on shares of Gap Inc., a solid retail sales report from the government (see related story on this page), and a lowered profi t outlook from Sears Holdings Corp. In the end, Monday was a bumpy ride with retail stocks surging in the morning session before pulling back by the early afternoon and closing the day with a slight gain.

At the bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.02 percent to 13,236.53 while the broader S&P 500 shed 0.05 percent to 1,452.92. The S&P Retail Index added 0.2 percent to 471.83.

An hour out of the gate, the Dow had jumped 0.5 percent, or about 65 points, to 13,304, while the S&P Retail Index rose 1.2 percent to 476.25. Some of the big gainers were Aéropostale Inc., BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc., Charlotte Russe

Holding Corp. and Dress Barn Inc., which watched their stocks rise 8.4, 4.5, 6 and 5.3 percent, respectively.

By the afternoon session, the S&P Retail Index had slowed with a 0.7 percent gain to 473.93. Retail stocks were mixed with some of the earlier gainers pulling back while the rest of the sector seemed to show more red than green. Casual Male Retail Group Inc. was down 5.8 during the early afternoon, while Gottschalks Inc. was off 6 percent on news of executive changes. However, Target Corp. was trading up 1.6 percent and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was chugging along with a 0.5 percent gain to its stock.

At the close, notable gainers included: Aéropostale, up 4.4 percent to $33.50; Kohl’s Corp., up 1.8 percent to $59.22, and J.C. Penney Co. Inc., up 1.5 percent to $65.07. Wal-Mart closed the day up 0.2 percent to $46.17 while Target rose 1.5 percent to $63.27. Charlotte Russe and Dress Barn fi nished up 1.9 percent to $17.21 and 1 percent to $17.43, respectively. BJ’s Wholesale Club gained 0.4 percent to $31.24. Casual Male fell 6.2 percent to $10.48, while Gottschalks lost 8 percent to $6.02.

The market reacted to the Federal Reserve’s move on Monday to inject another $2 billion into the banking system by buying overnight repurchase agreements. In total, the Federal Reserve has pumped $62 billion into the banking system since Thursday. The Federal Reserve is trying to keep the federal fund target rate at 5.25 percent, the interest rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans.

“It may be all that’s required if the injection of credit risk aversion subsides adequately over the near term. In the event of a freezing up of the capital markets [that] adversely affects the real economy, the Fed will cut rates, and a rate cut prob-ably will bring a return to normalcy for the capital markets,” said John Lonski, economist at Moody’s Investors Service.

The real economy, according to Lonski, is consumer spending, with capital expenditures and hiring activity being two important factors impacting how willing and able con-sumers are in opening their wallets.

The economist said the “real economy cannot shrug off dysfunctional capital markets indefi nitely, and if the Fed continually needs to inject huge amounts of reserves to keep the fed funds rate from rising above 5.25 percent, then chances are the Fed will cut rates [in September].”

A week ago, Lonski pegged a rate cut at 20 percent, but now has raised the percentage to a 60 percent likelihood of a rate cut. He also thinks that the market has overreacted to what it perceives as credit risks.

“The high-yield bond default rate is 1.5 percent, while the long-term average is close to 5 percent,” Lonski explained.

If creditor risk aversion stabilizes and subsides over the next few weeks, Lonski predicts that the likelihood of an interest rate cut next month will drop to less than 50 percent. If a rate cut occurs, it is expected on Sept. 18, the day of the next meet-ing of the Federal Open Market Committee. The FOMC is the monetary policy-making body of the Federal Reserve System.

Wall Street also was eyeing Sears Holdings Corp. For the second time in a month, Sears Holdings Corp. on Monday lowered second-quarter earnings guidance and increased the company’s share repurchase authorization.

Sears said it now expects second-quarter income for the period ended Aug. 4 to be between $170 million and $185 million, with diluted earnings per share between $1.13 and $1.23. The company previously lowered guidance on July 10 to between $160 million and $200 million, or between $1.06 and $1.32 a diluted share. The consensus estimate among Wall Street analysts at the time was $2.12 a share. Excluding a gain, the company in the same year-ago quarter earned $272 million, or $1.74 a share.

Kmart same-store sales fell by 3.8 percent, while Sears domestic stores were down by 4.3 percent.

As for lowering guidance a second time, the company said that, since its July 10 statement, the company “experienced high-er markdowns, most notably within seasonal apparel categories that were largely offset by lower payroll expense, including per-formance-based compensation and favorable inventory shrink.”

Sears said its board approved the repurchase of up to an additional $1.5 billion of the company’s common shares, in ad-dition to the $1 billion of shares approved on July 10. In total, the company has an aggregate authorization of $1.52 billion.

Bear Stearns analyst Christine Augustine maintained an “outperform” rating on the company’s stock. “We be-lieve Sears is committed to enhancing shareholder return, whether it is through share repurchases, acquisitions, other investments or improving the profi tability of the core busi-ness. Sears has one of the highest free cash fl ow yields in the broadlines universe at roughly 8 percent compared to the peer average of about 4 percent,” she wrote in a note.

Goldman Sachs analyst Adrianne Shapira said in a note that “a lack of further deterioration in [comps] and a tighten-ing in [the second quarter’s] expected EPS range displayed some fundamental stability.”

Shares of Sears Holdings ended Monday up 5.6 percent to $140.55.

In other retail sector movement, shares of Gap Inc. rose 2.6 percent to $17.19 following a “strong buy” upgrade from C.L. King analyst Mark Montagna.

In his research note, issued early Monday, Montagna said he also was setting a $20 target price on the stock. “We just upgraded to Neutral on August 7 based on expectations of improved expense controls and merchandise,” the analyst said. “We believe the August 9 monthly sales release demon-strated such improvements. We believe the upward potential for margins and sales could propel the stock to outperform our EPS estimates.”

Market Continues to Weigh Liquidity IssuesBindi Irwin may be best known for following

in her late “Crocodile Hunter” father Steve Irwin’s footsteps as an environmental conser-vationist, but as it turns out, the eight-year-old is also a budding fashion entrepreneur.

Irwin, who has been busy this summer doing crocodile research with her mom, Terri, in her home country of Australia, is preparing for her fi rst trip to the MAGIC trade show in Las Vegas at the end of the month. There, she plans to introduce her children’s clothing line, Bindi Wear International. Her plan, with the help of her mom, is not only to launch an apparel collection, but to use it to infuse interest in wildlife conservation. The real reason for the launch is to raise money for the cause, as 100 percent of the proceeds from sales of the line will go directly to support the Australia Zoo’s conservation programs.

“My daddy was working to change the world, so everyone would love wildlife like he did,” Bindi said in an e-mail. She and her mom have been in a remote part of Australia, where their crocodile re-search will con-tinue until they leave for MAGIC on Aug. 25. “Now it is our turn to help.”

The l ine, designed by Irwin family friend Palmina DiStasi, consists of a full range of product for ba-bies (newborn to two years) and girls and boys (ages three to 12). DiStasi, who has a strong b a c k g r o u n d in the fashion industry, has been designing a Bindi Wear line of apparel exclusively for the Australia Zoo for about seven years. Now that the line is going to be sold internation-ally, DiStasi said it is much more extensive and fashion-forward.

“Since the line was only sold at the zoo, the clothes were quite touristy,” DiStasi said. “It’s nice that now we can do a bit more with the line and since Bindi is older, she’s done so much for it. We’ve even taken her own art-work and incorporated it into the designs, and she always tells us what she wants and doesn’t want in the collection.”

The line includes casual daywear with T-shirts, cargos, hoodies and dresses. There is also sleepwear, swimwear, footwear, bags and hats. Many items include Bindi’s own messages that tackle environmental issues, such as de-forestation and animal consumption. The mes-sages printed on the products are written in Bindi’s handwriting. The line wholesales from $10 to $40.

“There are plenty of bright colors through-out, when in the past it was all safari-inspired, using olive greens and brown colors,” DiStasi said. “It’s just so much fun to design.”

— Julee Greenberg

“In the event of a freezing up of the capital markets [that] adversely affects the real economy, the Fed will cut rates, and a rate cut probably will bring a return to normalcy for the capital markets.”

— John Lonski, Moody’s Investors Service

Crikey, Mate! Bindi Irwin To Launch Kids’ Apparel

Bindi Irwin in one of her designs.

WWD.COM15WWD, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007

Nike’s two highest-paid executives received compensation pack-ages totaling more than $11 million in fiscal 2007.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission fi ling, Mark Parker, chief executive offi cer and president, and Charles Denson, president of the Nike brand, earned pay packages worth $6.2 mil-lion and $5.5 million, respectively.

Parker, who is in his fi rst year as head of the company, would have placed in the number six spot on WWD’s list of top-paid ven-dors released earlier this month. His pay package included a base salary of $1.3 million and stock and options totaling more than $2.6 million.

The company’s proxy statement was fi led after the WWD report. Parker would have bumped Kenneth Pucker, executive vice presi-dent and chief operating offi cer at Timberland Co., down one spot. Pucker earned a total compensation of $6 million.

Parker’s “other” compensation, which totaled $2.3 million, in-cludes nonequity incentive plan compensation, change in pension value and nonqualifi ed deferred compensation earnings, use of air-craft, 401k contributions and other perks. Previously, Parker served as co-president of the Nike brand.

Denson earned a base salary of $1.2 million and was awarded stock and options reaching $2.4 million. Denson would have pushed Mark Weber, the former ceo at Phillips-Van Heusen Corp., down one spot. Weber earned $5 million last year.

Denson’s “other” compensation equaled $135,775, and includ-ed matching contribution to charities and contributions to his 401k.

— Jeanine Poggi

Nike’s Parker Nets $6.2MGroup Lobbies Against Garment District RezoningNEW YORK — The Garment District is under attack, according to those who gathered on Wednesday to discuss Garment District Rezoning: The End of the Fashion Industry in New York?

Savethegarmentcenter.com leaders asked the approximately 20 people at a meeting to sign petitions and appeal to people in power, like members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and city offi cials, to protect the 1987 zoning law that dedicates half of the space in the Garment District to apparel companies. The meeting, held at the Penn Plaza Pavilion, followed Direction: The International Textile Design Show.

The asymmetric cross-shaped area between 35th and 40th Streets between Broadway and Ninth Avenue might be seeing rent increases if the apparel industry loses its preferred status. As rents rise, sample rooms, factories and suppliers will close or get pushed to outer boroughs, ac-cording to Samantha Cortes, president and chief executive offi cer of Fashion Design Concepts Inc., who also cofounded savethegarmentcenter.com and spearheaded the meeting.

According to Cortes, areas surrounding the zoned district are charging upward of $100 per square foot, compared with the approximately $25

per square foot charged in the zoned space. “So these landlords are thinking, ‘if I can get $125 a square foot, then why am I getting $25,’ and they are putting pressure on the fashion industry to change the zoning,” she said.

Cortes said her rent on 38th Street increased 35 percent, but moving costs were prohibitive, so her sample service stayed put. Larry Geffner, also at the meeting, said he extended Vogue Too: Pleating, Stitching & Embroidery Inc.’s lease on 37th Street two years early, under the theory rates are just going to continue to increase.

“We acknowledge that the industry has shrunk, but you still need a critical mass to be preserved,” said Geffner. “If we lose even a small portion of what we have, we will lose the nucleus of the in-dustry in the city, and if we lose the nucleus of the New York Garment District, we will lose the shows and we will lose the status as fashion capital. To be competitive on the world market, the Garment District companies cannot afford the higher rates that law fi rms and other offi ces are willing to pay.”

Geffner said New York could lose out to China, Los Angeles or even Chicago, which is actively cultivating a fashion image.

— Whitney Beckett

WWD.COM/CLASSIFIEDS

For more career opportunities log on to fashioncareers.com. Call 1.800.423.3314 or e-mail fpclassified@fairchildpub.com to advertise.

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AGENTWorld renowned Modeling Agency isseeking a highly motivated Asst./JuniorAgent with 1 to 2 years experience insales & fashion. Please send resumesw/cover letter to: gtartists@yahoo.com

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Assistant DesignerFast growing infant apparel co. seekingorganized & motivated assistant design-er with strong communication skills.Must be a team player w/ability to multitask & meet deadlines. Proficiency inIllustrator is a must. Excellent benefitsoffered. Please email resumes to:

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Designer

Handbag DesignerLeading Handbag Co. is looking for anenergetic, creative Handbag Designer.The ideal candidate must have minimumof 3 years experience and excellentsketching abilities. CAD, Photoshop &Illustrator experience a must. Salary andbenefit package is commiserate withexperience. If interested in joining asuccessful company please Fax yourresume to: 212-329-4930

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FAST GROWING DRESS COMPANYIS SEEKING THE FOLLOWING:

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E-mail resumes to:hyunjuk@pacificgrp.com

FIT MODEL/$30KReceptionist

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GMMMarket leader seeks an accomplishedretail executive with a reputation forperformance and integrity. Must be astrong, talented and unrelentingmerchant with a passion for product.Confidentiality assured.

Fax or email your resume to: (732) 280-6190 or apparelvp@yahoo.com

SAMPLE MAKERGrowing Women’s Couture Co. seekshighly skilled & experienced individual.Stable position. Emphasis on evening.

Please call: 212-869-2296 orfax resume to: 212-869-2236.

Sourcing ManagerMin of 5 yrs exp. in management ofSourcing/Price Negotiation/Productionas it relates to importing from China.Prefer candidate w/exp in home textiles,but would also consider candidatesfrom fabric/apparel industries. Musthave exp w/negotiating price of fabricand finished product w/ China. Willhave P/L accountability. Must under-stand the product development processand international sourcing. Must bedetail- oriented and have great organi-zational, operational & communicationskills. Must speak/ read/write Englishand Mandarin. Willing to travel overseasto China (approx 6x/yr). Position basedin Edison, NJ. Salary commensuratewith experience.

Please send your resume to:hardygirl013@yahoo.com

SPEC. TECHNICIANFast paced knitwear importer seeks anexp’d and professional Spec Tech forLadies/Kids/Mens/Boys knit tops andbottoms. Strong knowledge of grading,garment construction and live fittings amust. We’re looking for a detail orientedteam player with excellent computer &communication skills. Flat sketchingability a plus. Full company benefits!Email resume: Freezeimport@aol.com

or Fax to: (212) 944-2867

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3) Sweaters 4) All Level PositionsCall B. Murphy(212)643-8090; fax 643-8127

Ladies’ OuterwearSALES EXECUTIVE

Est’d. Ladies’ Outerwear Co. seeking self-motivated individual, capable of headingup a division. Must possess existingrelationships with Dept./Specialty Storesand mass market. Please E-mail allresumes to: sellcoats@yahoo.com

Boutique Sales StaffJapanese high-end clothing boutiqueseeks motivated, F/T Sales Staff for itsSoho & Upper East Side locations. Experi-ence is not necessary but excellent customerservice is a must. Fax/E-mail resume to:212-517-8845 / jobs@rby45rpm.com

Flemington FursSeeking exp’d. Fur/Luxury OuterwearSales Associates. Full/Part-Time positionsavailable. Excellent work environment,benefits, etc. To schedule an interview,please call Ms. Rucker at: 908-782-2212

Summer Retail PositionsThe Source agency has many openingsfor RETAIL sales, host/hostesses, stockpeople & cashiers for upscale client.Must be reliable, dedicated & friendly.Some exp preferred. Must be able towork from Aug. 16th through Sept. 3rd.Open Interviews Monday through Friday

10:00 A.M to 1:00 P.M.Contact Russell at: (212) 949-8287

The Source Agency295 Madison Ave. 14th Floor, NY, NY

KNITWEAR DESIGNERSr. level Knitwear Designer w/extensivemarket exp., savvy w/latest trends, colors,extremely technical w/sweaters; seeksFT/PT., E-mail: knittygritty8@gmail.com

WWDmagazines

For more information on advertising in WWD Magazines, contact Ralph Erardy, sr vp group publisher, at 212-630-4589.

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