According to her Facebook profile, Lydia Hearst is engaged! After just one week of dating Matt Rains, Trevor Rains' brother, the twinkly-eyed socialite posted the update: "Lydia Marie Hearst Shaw went from being 'it's complicated' to 'engaged.' [Daily Intel]  read more »

Sen. McCain may have called his wife the c-word in 1992 after she suggested he might be balding. To her credit, she wasn't exactly wrong. [NY Daily News]

Recently rehabilitated Kirsten Dunst was spotted dining with co-star Ryan Gosling at Freeman's restaurant on the Lower East Side on Saturday. [P6]  read more »

Despite what may sometimes seem like a growing anti-fur trend in fashion, the Times of London reports today that global prices for mink pelts have never been higher, reaching record levels over the last two years. The primary source of such growing demand reportedly comes from China and Russia, where the soft stuff is considered hotter than mod. But in North America, too, the cost of mink has more than doubled since the late 1990s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Despite fashion labels that have publicly boycotted the use of fur—Calvin Klein, Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger—there are still plenty of others who favor using real fuzzy flesh in their garments. In our November interview with Ingrid Newkirk, the president and co-founder of PETA, she questioned the ethics and motives of fashionistas like Alexander McQueen, Karl Lagerfeld and Jean Paul Gaulteir, calling them “desperate.”  read more »

Also on Monday, Dec. 17, French curator Pierre Passebon presented some “personal items”—don’t get excited, we’re talkin’ furniture, vases and the like—from the Hamburg and Biarritz estates of the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.  read more »

Meet Irina Lazareanu, a 25-year-old Canadian model and, more famously, Karl Lagerfeld’s main muse. Admittedly, this clip is kind of mesmerizing. She makes getting ready to go out look like a total blast—far more appealing than the Van Cleef and Arpels party where she ends up getting her groove on anyway. It’s easy to see why Ms. Lazareanu has made such a splash in the fashion world. She is a striking multi-tasker on a stylish vengeance. For one thing, she can D.J. and dance around her apartment at the same time. Even more, she knows how to pick out the perfect $1.45 million diamond necklace to go with her emerald Zac Posen dress.

At the clip’s climax, Ms. Lazareanu fans herself in the back of a kitted-out stretch limo—around the time her hair starts “falling apart”—and tells the blotto fellow slouched beside her about the time she met Leonard Cohen in Paris. In fact, she says, Mr. Cohen, a fellow Canadian, is the reason she started writing. “I literally hyperventilated, and I never do that with anybody!” she tells her disinterested pal. More than a mere writer-muse-model-dancing-D.J., Ms. Lazareanu is also a musician. Having reportedly worked with Pete Doherty and Kate Moss on a Babyshambles tune in the past, she is currently working on a duet album with Sean Lennon.

Fabiola Beracasa just returned from a trip to Beijing, where the socialite was a special guest at a Karl Lagerfeld for that Fendi fashion show atop the Great Wall.

Last night she was wearing suede boots, short pantaloons and a corseted top—all black and all Fendi—to a ball to benefit RXArt, a charity that puts art in hospitals, that was held on the third floor of a brick building on the corner of West 15th St. and Tenth Ave..

“You felt the oppression there," she told The Daily Transom. "I had a video camera and, you know, I was told by several of the media people from Fendi to be careful, that I may be questioned about it, and just like, the way the city is—these giant roads, these giant buildings—you feel the oppression!”  read more »

A little more than two years ago, the designer Karl Lagerfeld agreed to have lunch with the French filmmaker Rodolphe Marconi and a documentary was born.  read more »

Will Oldham has always been fascinated with pop icons (check out this video for Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me”). He’ll take on R. Kelly, Danzig, and Bjork with his Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy outfit release Ask Forgiveness. It will include eight covers in all.

New York Mag inspires us to finish The Brothers Karamozov starting tonight. We swear!

Jay-Z will come out of his 23rd retirement to perform at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Nov. 13.

iTunes revs up their film archives. Selma Blair’s boobs, which star in Ed Burns’ new movie Purple Violets, are going to look mighty tiny on the iPod screen.

A documentary about Karl Lagerfield will screen at Film Forum tomorrow night, with the director on hand for discussion about black clothes and Nicole Kidman.

A new doc about the Chanel designer reveals a cold, aging man clinging to youth (a ponytail! 100 iPods!).  read more »