1. company town
    Proenza Schouler Shoots Too Early at TargetFASHION • Proenza Schouler’s Target line was available online for four hours yesterday (three days before its official debut), causing mass Internet shopper hysteria. [Fashionista] • Snejana Onopka, one of the poster girls for the current Save the Models movement, is rumored to be skipping New York Fashion Week. [FlyPaper] • Jordan Scott, former designer at Betsey Johnson and child of the East Village, will launch his first collection during Fashion Week. [British Vogue]
  2. company town
    Star Takes the Stand, Forgets Her Past LAW • Back before Star Jones married a beard and was thwarted by Barbara Walters, she had to prosecute guys named T-Black and A. [NYP] • With New Jersey opening the door to “irreconcilable differences” in divorces, New York may now be the only state that forbids “no-fault” splits. [New Jersey Law Blog via New York Divorce Report] • New York State’s chief judge says underpaid jurists are at a new “level of frustration and anger and despair” over their meager paychecks. [NYLJ]
  3. company town
    Bloated Executive Birthday Parties are Back!FINANCE • Stephen A. Schwartzman’s 60th-birthday bacchanal will have 1,500 guests marching around the drill room of the Park Avenue armory on February 13. [NYT] • Management tips from Super Bowl coaches: Don’t scream at your employees. [WSJ] • At Citigroup, CEO Charles Prince can either improve the company’s performance, or break it up. [Crain’s]
  4. company town
    CNBC Backs Anchor Maria BartiromoMEDIA • The story of the jet-fueled relationship between ex-Citigroup exec Todd Thompson and CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo has turned from a snowball into an avalanche. [WSJ] • Newspapers eliminated about 1,500 positions in 2006, an improvement over 2005, when 2,500 scribes took a walk. [E&P] • Putting scratch-and-sniff ads in the Wall Street Journal actually makes us less inclined to read a newspaper. [AdAge]
  5. company town
    Uniqlo’s Success Brings More Japanese RetailFASHION • Following the ultrasuccessful debut of Uniqlo, Japanese store Muji to open two stores in NYC. [WWD] • Libertine settled its copyright-infringement suit against knockoff king Allen Schwartz. [Downtown Darling] • Tyra Banks gains weight, laments fashion’s unreasonable expectations. [People] FINANCE • Merrill’s top brass gave themselves a big ($172 million) pat on the back for a job well done in 2006. [WSJ ] • Venture capitalists invested $2 billion in 249 companies in the New York area last year, up 18 percent from 2005. It was the highest level of funding since 2001, when the Internet broke. [Crain’s] • If increasing the size of the biggest leverage buyout bid in history doesn’t make Stephen Schwarzman sweat, the Blackstone Group should be just fine. [DealBook]
  7. company town
    Sullivan & Cromwell Bleeds AssociatesLAW • Sullivan & Cromwell lost about 30 percent of its associates in 2004 and 2005. It might take more than a raise to fix that. [WSJ] • Don’t despair, associates! Where Simpson Thacher goes, Milbank Tweed, Sullivan & Cromwell, Paul Weiss, Cleary Gottlieb, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft are sure to follow. [Above the Law] • Long Island lawyer Gary Berenholtz, who once exposed a corrupt Brooklyn judge, stole money from clients and his partner’s widow to fund fine dining and finer vacations. [NYP] FINANCE • The New York Stock Exchange will trade almost exclusively electronically by the end of today; investment firms will continue to lay off floor traders. [WSJ] • The New York City employees’ pension fund is the lead plaintiff in a suit against Apple Computer Inc. for overcompensating executives with illegal stock options. [Reuters]
  8. company town
    Yeah, We Should Have Gone to Law SchoolLAW • Simpson Thacher & Barlett has raised first-year associate salaries from $145K to $160K. Expect the rest of the white-shoe firms to follow suit. [Above the Law] • Lawyers dissed in Oscar nominations. Whither Atticus Finch? [Law Blog] FASHION Is Valentino retiring? The rumor — straight from yesterday’s couture show — has the designer stepping down in July. [Fashion Week Daily] • The latest Chanel accessory: furniture. The company is commissioning a red chair inspired by a Swiss Army knife. [WWD]
  9. in other news
    An Analogy Is a Terrible Thing to WasteCBS’s do-gooding PublicEye media-issues blog yesterday examined how the press addresses race: CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts says he is “clear and comfortable with the notion that many people, when they see me, they will see my race first.” Still, the media’s treatment of race can get to him. “When Ed Bradley died, I was struck how in many of the national articles written about him, in the first sentence was the fact that he was an African-American man. I was stunned by that. When Peter Jennings died, nobody said one of the premiere white journalists, or one of the premiere Canadian journalists. They didn’t point out in the first sentence that he didn’t finish college. No one said that.” Because for Pitts, while noting someone’s race is problematic, equating being black with being uneducated is just fine. When the Topic Is Race, Media Turns Uneasy Lens on Itself [PublicEye]