Buzz Bissinger is the author of the Texas high-school football book Friday Night Lights and Prayer for the City, which is about Philadelphia under former Mayor Ed Rendell. Mr. Bissinger also wrote the Vanity Fair article on which the movie Shattered Glass was based. He is 53 years old, with a wide, almost froglike face and glasses, and on the night of Tuesday, April 29, he participated in a panel discussion on HBO’s Costas Now, hosted by NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, on the subject of sports and the Internet.  read more »

In Milan, where fashion week is currently underway, Giorgio Armani recently decided to ban Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn from his show, which took place last night. Aside from the 73-year-old designer’s apparent displeasure with Mr. Horyn’s write up of events preceding the show (and, perhaps, an unflattering comment she made about one of his trousers last year), the real reason for his decision has been a matter of speculation. Filing a dispatch from the northern Italian city, The Daily has just provided additional details and developments concerning the exile.  read more »

"We didn't make the product -- the product made us," Ian Schrager told The Observer about becoming a famous hotelier.

What does the godfather of boutique hotels think of the latest wave of aspiring celebrity hoteliers, Robert De Niro, Giorgio Armani and Jay-Z?

"I think when people hear Jay-Z's name, they have a certain level of expectation of the kind of music they're going to hear. I don't think they have a lot of expectation about what kind of hotel they're going to get," he said.  read more »

Actor Robert De Niro used to be just another famous guest in the world of swanky hotels.

Now, he’s opening his own posh lodge in downtown Manhattan.  read more »

The Brits really do love them some David Beckham. The footballer’s ad campaign for Armani underwear hasn’t even launched in the land of fish and chips, but lads in the U.K. are already clamoring for a piece of his Giorgio pie. Some three months before Mr. Beckham’s face will grace ads for the Italian fashion label, sales of white Armani briefs ($30) have jumped 50 percent at Selfridges stores. (The sales spike came just after the British press leaked the news of the Beckham-Armani deal.) “David Beckham is a global style icon, appealing equally to men and women. Where he goes, fashion is bound to follow," said David Walker-Smith, menswear director at Selfridges. [WWD]

It's a bird...It's a plane...It's Anna Wintour! “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” the name of a forthcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, will also be the theme of the museum's annual Costume Institute gala, where guests are likely to encounter quite the spectacle, reports WWD. Nathan Crowley, who is probably best known for his set designs for movies like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Batman Begins and The Dark Night, has been hired as the museum’s creative consultant for an exhibit, which will launch on May 5, the same night as the costume fête. The exhibit’s superhero theme will also dictate the look and feel of the party—the aesthetics for which Mr. Crowley—along with Raul Avila—will decide. Giorgio Armani will be the gala’s honorary chair, alongside co-chairs George Clooney, Julia Roberts and, of course, Ms. Wintour.

If David Beckham putting his junk in your trunks can't sell them, then nothing can. Or at least that’s what Giorgio Armani is likely hoping by asking the soccer stud, 32, to be the global face (and bod) of the designer’s new underwear collection. Mr. Beckham shot part of the ad campaign last week in Los Angeles with glammed-out fashion-photog duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.

In related news, it was reported over the weekend that the LA Galaxy player is, according to England’s head coach, Steve McClaren, hoping to win over 100 international games, or caps, for his home team, effectively proving his critics wrong. Mr. Beckham is currently three caps short of his goal. On Friday, Mr. Posh will partake in England’s friendly with Austria, following that game up with the Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia five days later.

Beckham Strikes Armani Deal [WWD]

Beckham can go past a century with England [AFP]

Hello, I'm Giorgio Armani.

Find out all you've ever wanted to know about Pam Liebman, Dottie Herman, Louise Sunshine, and Elizabeth Stribling, who provides this story about breaking into the industry.

I was at a party in Newport, Rhode Island and I told my escort that I was looking for a job…but that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. He asked if I had ever thought about real estate. Just an off-chance question, but afterwards…when I looked at the New York Times and read all the ads for duplexes and townhouses, it so sounded terribly glamorous that I decided to sell in real estate. I learned pretty quickly because I had a genuine knack for negotiation.

And what about each woman's forecast for 2006? Not surprisingly, they're quite optimistic.

A Boymelgreen spokesman, Lloyd Kaplan, said that the developer sometimes uses union labor, depending on the project, but he could not elaborate on the Pine Street deal. Anthony Pugliese, an organizer for the New York District Council of Carpenters, said that the carpenters did not reduce their wages nor make other concessions, but that the other trades may have agreed to productivity measures, such as cutting the minimum number of workers needed on the job. In return for the developer promising to hire union on the upcoming Pine Street rehab, Pugliese said locals agreed to stop putting The Rat outside a nearby Boymelgreen project at 15 Broad Street. We waited to post this item until we got more details from participants, but unfortunately we still have not heard back from Ed Malloy, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council, who coordinates the unions that would have taken part in the pact.