Photo: Style.com

Color Palette: Evergreen, red oak and heather grey

Mood: Dark but sensual, mysterious and glamorous

Statement Pieces: Obviously the aforementioned giant raccoon hats as well as an opulent silver fox coat. But a sheer python print silk chiffon gown paired with leather evening gloves — a reoccurring and rather lovely accessory featured throughout the entire collection — was sublime.

Front Row Name Drops: Tried my darndest but I couldn’t recognize anyone. Guess it’s time I brush up on my directory of mid-range celebrities.

Runway Music: “Too Insistent” by The Dø

Thank you. Madge looks the best I’ve seen her in 102 years in this Vionnet gown, but the real kicker are the giant, completely unnecessary but nonetheless perfect sunglasses studded with red crystals. While Madonna looks great, the advanced buzz for W.E. is…god awful. Swept Away 2: On the Shores of Failure.

Knightley is just one of two cover stars, the other being James Thíerrée, a French performer who counts Charlie Chaplin and Eugene O’Neil as antecedents. The current  issue — well, really the only issue since the last Egoiste with a naked Natalia Vodianova on the cover came out 5 years ago — also features a wide range of interviews and collaborations from Roman Polanski, Beth Ditto, Diane von Furstenberg, Yoko Ono and others.

Besides coming out when it damn well feels like it, Egoïste is different from other mags in that all of the ads therein are the brainchild of its kooky editor, Wisniak, who now works from her own bed in her Parisian apartment.

To wit, the ad for Louis Vuitton sounds better than whatever they’re planning with Angelina Jolie:

The Louis Vuitton ad took Wisniak and her deputy, Eleonore Therond, a full year to create. It features a lost polar bear on an adventure with a monogrammed Louis Vuitton trunk. He embarks through the tundra with it; clings to it like a buoy in frigid waters, eventually finds shelter on a boat bound for civilization—and then, trunk in hand, crashes onto the stage of a lecture given by Al Gore on the perils of global warming.

A true rarity in fashion, in publishing and just in the pace of the modern world, Egoïste has become a collector’s item with the December 1977 issue featuring Mick Jagger recently selling on eBay for $1,100. And appropriately, you won’t find Egoïste hanging around on a shelf at Barnes and Noble; the only retailer in America that carries the mag is New York’s Rizzoli Bookstore.

Perhaps one day Keira Knightely’s cover will fetch a similar price tag. The actress and occasional Chanel cyclist may seem an odd choice considering the iconoclastic cover stars before her, but for Wisniak, it’s not about being current or on trend: “It’s about lasting. It’s like a bet to see who will still be interesting in 10 years.”  [Daily Beast]

Here is a great advertisement for ‘Greed’ a new perfume by Fransceso Vezzoli in which Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams engage in a fierce battle over said product.

Directed by Roman Polanski, this project’s goal is is to isolate and imitate the hype created by the promotion of a new luxury product in the mass market. Basically, a faux ad campaign for an imagined perfume.

LINKAGE: Wicked Halo