insider wire

Kate Lanphear has found a new job after leaving her position as Elle's style director in November.

Journalist Jim Shi tweeted on Monday that "Lanphear has joined T: The New York Times Style Magazine as style director. She'll be at the upcoming women's shows with Team T." The Times' official communications account later confirmed the news by tweeting, "Welcome to Kate Lanphear, new Style Director of @TMagazine."

Lanphear has been the subject of a number of job-related rumors over the past several months. In October, she was mentioned as a possible replacement for Deborah Needleman, who left WSJ. Magazine to take over T in September. In November, some believed she was headed to a start-up magazine called Editorialist.

She's the newest big-name addition to the team since stylist Joe McKenna was named the magazine's fashion director at large in November.

After five seasons of giving small and private presentations of his women's clothing, Tom Ford is coming back to the runway for Fall 2013.

Ford told The Sunday Times that he plans to stage a large-scale show during London Fashion Week. The official schedule has Ford's show down for 7 p.m. on Feb. 18.

"This is going to be for 500 to 1,000 people. Photographers, bloggers — a regular, real show," Ford said. "I want to show in London because I now have 100 stores worldwide. The company has jumped, and I can no longer service the stores by not showing. So I have to love it and embrace it."

When Ford scheduled his women's Spring 2011 show — his first offering for the ladies since leaving Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent in 2004 — he kept the show private so the clothing wouldn't get overexposed. He enlisted women like Beyoncé, Daphne Guinness, and Lou Doillon as models. Only 100 people were invited to attend, and Terry Richardson was the only photographer allowed to take pictures.

"I want fashion to be fun again, like it was in the '60s," Ford said at the time. "You couldn't wait to get the clothes and put them on, and I think we've lost that."

That first show was in New York, but Ford said he likes living in London.

"I hope it works here, because my dream goal is to raise my children here," he said. "I'm very old-fashioned. When I was little, I was brought up to say, 'Hello, Mr. Ford'; 'Hello, Mrs. So-and-so'; 'sir and ma'am.' I want that for my children. . . . I'm only here 180 days [of the year], but I like the humour, the formality, the manners, the irreverence in England."

A text message received by the son of Guido Foresti, one of the men on board Vittorio Missoni's missing plane, has led investigators to believe that their disappearance may actually have been a hijacking. On Sunday evening, Foresti's son received a message saying, "Call now, we are reachable," but no one has been able to reach Foresti's phone. Investigators are now looking for signs that the four were taken hostage.

This has renewed the Missoni family's hope that Vittorio and his traveling companions are indeed alive. "It's better to be kidnapped than at the bottom of the sea," said Vittorio's sister Angela on Monday. "We hope all four are alive and well. We also hope that the searches go in all directions."

Vittorio had been vacationing with his wife Maurizia Castiglioni and two other couples in the Venezuelan islands of Los Roques. Vittorio, Castiglioni, Guido Foresti and Foresti's wife Elda Scalvenzi were on board the plane with two Venezuelan crew members. The other two people on vacation, Scalvenzi's brother Giuseppe and his wife Rosa Apostoli, were believed by some to have been kidnapped, but the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reported that they made it to Milan safely on Sunday.

Three days after a small plane carrying Vittorio Missoni went missing off the coast of Venezuela, members of his family are staying optimistic that he'll be found.

"Our hope is that he is still alive," said Vittorio's sister Angela — the brand's creative director — in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. "We want to hope, because for us it is important."

Other members of the family have been active on Twitter. Margherita Missoni has been retweeting news stories about the disappearance. Her cousin Jennifer last night said, "We believe. We won't stop until we #findvittoriomissoni !!!!!"

Venezuelan officials have vowed they won't stop, either. The search team includes a plane, two helicopters, several Coast Guard boats, and nearly 30 divers, according to the Associated Press. They've been searching for the plane and its six passengers since they were reported missing on Friday.

"All the authorities involved in these tasks are not reducing the intensity of the search until they locate the plane as well as its crew and passengers," the government said in a statement.

La Repubblica broke the news that Missoni, his wife Maurizia Castiglioni, their friends Guido Foresti and Elda Scalvenzi, and two Venezuelan crew members were missing on Friday. The four had been on vacation in Los Roques with Scalvenzi's brother Giuseppe and his wife Rosa Apostoli, but those two didn't board the missing plane because there wasn't enough room. Il Messaggero reported that they arrived safely in Milan on Sunday.

Vittorio was headed to an airport outside of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. Afterward he'd planned to go to Spain and then to Italy, where Missoni had been scheduled to show its latest men's collection on Jan. 13. The brand is expected to decide today whether the show will go on.

Angela said she was notified about her brother's disappearance while on vacation in Oman with her parents, Rosita and Ottavio, who founded the brand in 1953. She told her mother immediately, but they waited to tell her father.

"We decided to let him rest, he was very tired," Angela said. "When, at 5:30 in the morning he saw us all standing and he looked at our faces and said, 'What happened? I am 92, but I'm not stupid.' And so we told him the truth."

The great editor shakeup of 2012 is continuing right on into the New Year with a recent round of staff changes at Glamour. The magazine has replaced its longtime beauty director Felicia Milewicz, who left in November, with Marie Claire's former beauty and health director Ying Chu.

Chu will serve as the magazine's executive beauty director, overseeing beauty content both in print and online. She'll work closely with editor in chief Cindi Leive. Chu will be replaced by Erin Flaherty, Marie Claire's current executive beauty editor.

"There is not a more exciting place to be, or a more inspirational editor to work with," said Chu, who starts her new job at the end of the month. "And I can't wait to engage with the Glamour audience!"

The new hire coincides with a round of promotions: Glamour's executive fashion director Anne Christensen is now creative director, fashion; and design director Geraldine Hessler's new title is creative director, design. Suzanne Donaldson, previously the magazine's photo director, is now its executive photo director.

The Glamour team is just one of many glossy magazine staffs that have been rocked by editors coming and going in the last several months. Last October, Glamour's senior beauty editor Elaine Welteroth left the magazine to replace Teen Vogue's outgoing beauty and health director Eva Chen.

Before he met his partner Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino says he was a freewheeling 26-year-old who just wanted to have a good time.

The Daily Telegraph asked the designer to describe a photo of himself working in 1958, when he'd just come back to Rome to set up his first atelier on the Via Condotti. He'd just spent several years in Paris, going to clubs with Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent after class at the Ecole de la Chambre de la Mode. Before heading back to Italy, he worked for designers Jean Desses and Guy Laroche.

"At this time, I just wanted to have fun, drive a sports car, sunbathe at the beach, wear leather pants, and dance," he said. "But not long after this photograph was taken, I went to have drinks with friends and met Giancarlo Giammetti. It was Giancarlo who started to grow the business [he dropped out of studying architecture to look after the financial side of Valentino's fashion house from 1960]. We moved to Via Gregoriana, where we had 100 people in the atelier. Giancarlo decided that I should show my collections in Florence as it was a very important market. It all took off for me when the buyers of the American department stores Bloomingdale's, Saks, Macy's, and Neiman Marcus discovered me there."

Giancarlo Giammetti and Valentino at a party in 2006.

After months of speculation that Diesel founder Renzo Rosso would buy a stake in Marni, Rosso confirmed on Thursday that the brand is now in his portfolio.

The exact figures of the deal were not disclosed, but Reuters reports that Rosso made the acquisition through his holding company, Only the Brave, which in addition to Diesel also controls Maison Martin Margiela and Viktor & Rolf. Rosso told WWD that it's his ultimate goal to crate the industry's next big fashion conglomerate.

"It's my big dream to create a modern group that is an alternative to the existing ones," he said. "We are beginning to become one such group, and we are working on consolidating it."

Rosso's investment will not only help open more Marni boutiques around the world, but also push the brand into markets like China. That's the kind of support Marni founder and CEO Gianni Castiglioni said he was looking for in October.

"We would like to double our sales in five years through a further development of retail but without drastically overturning our company," he said. "I would be open to consider a partner only if he would share my vision in managing the company. We are looking at industrial partners that can provide competence and long-term vision."

Industrially speaking, Rosso is a good fit. Through its subsidiaries, Only the Brave manufactures clothing for Vivienne Westwood, Dsquared2, and Marc Jacobs's menswear line. Rosso is also invested in the ecommerce giant Yoox, and in Marcolin, a company that produces eyewear for Tom Ford, Roberto Cavalli, and — naturally — Diesel.

Designers Emily Current and Merritt Elliott have announced they're leaving Current/Elliott, the premium denim label they founded in 2008.

"We are so proud of what we have accomplished with Current/Elliott," the two said in a statement, declining to offer an explanation for their departure. "Parting ways has been a difficult decision, but we are thrilled for our next chapter in design and to perpetuate our whimsical Americana aesthetic across multiple categories."

The two will still work together as stylists and consultants, and have a few future design projects lined up.

If three instances of the same occurrence makes a trend, 2012 was a trendy year for designers to leave the brands they founded. Simon Spurr left his eponymous menswear line without explanation in March, and Doo-Ri Chung left her award-winning label Doo.Ri in June.

PPR's executive team is having discussions about backing a new brand, but it's not known yet who the lucky designer to join the fashion conglomerate will be.

"We have been talking about investing in a new luxury name," said PPR CEO Francois-Henri Pinault in an interview with the Financial Times. "We have no more young brands since Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney have all passed the €100 million mark (just over $132 million at current exchange)."

When PPR makes an acquisition, Pinault said, it usually tries to break into an area where it's underrepresented. For example, the firm recently purchased Qeelin, a Hong Kong jewelry operation. Before that, Boucheron was the only jewelry unit in PPR's luxury portfolio. Pinault also made it clear that PPR "will not buy a promising brand and try to move it into another sector."

And though there has been speculation that PPR has been in talks with Christopher Kane, the firm's method of buying new brands would suggest that his label might not be the right fit. Kane's product is certainly different from other PPR brands. But as far as his business model is concerned, Kane's brand is a smaller, younger version of what PPR already has in its stable. Christopher Kane, Stella McCartney, and Alexander McQueen all offer high-end women's clothing — even around the same price point — and all three brands speak to a modern British design sensibility. If PPR did invest in Kane, it would be at odds with how Pinault has described his brand-buying methods.

Still, this hasn't stopped industry observers from honing in on Kane as a possible contender for PPR's investment. He's been a free agent since he left his position as the creative director of Versace's Versus line to focus on his own brand last month. Kane was even mentioned as a possible replacement for Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga.