Leighton Meester

Before Penn Badgely acquired his sarcastic smirk, before Leighton Meester had a stylist, before Blake Lively's breasts became the lead characters on Gossip Girl, before Taylor Momsen's '80s glam hair, and before Ed Westwick mastered the Chuck Face, the young actors on the CW show were, shall we say, not quite as polished.

Digging through old photos of the cast, the Daily Transom discovered that the group of twentysomething lead actors--or teenage actors in Ms. Momsen's case--that have become the beautiful young fixtures on red carpets over the past year were once just goofy teenagers with bad skin and terrible fashion sense.  read more »

In an ideal world, if Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick, the young actors who play the evil but secretly good Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl, were to appear in an ad campaign, it would be for Marc Jacobs or Miu Miu or even Chanel; those are just the kind of labels we imagine Chuck and Blair promoting. 

But somehow, Mr. Westwick's and Ms. Meester's agents don't seem to get all of this. And instead of a high-end, Chuck-and-Blair-appropriate ad campaign, both Ms. Meester and Mr. Westwick are promoting sneakers. Sneakers!  read more »

Economy, schmonomy! On a busy night for the stars of Gossip Girl, Leighton Meester and Jessica Szohr turned up at last Thursday's VIP shopping party that kicked off the annual credit card-fest known as Lucky Shops, sponsored by Condé Nast shopping rag Lucky. The Metropolitan Pavilion had been fashioned into an urban woman's dream: discounted shoes and bags, with a side of free ice cream and tiny French fries!  

"I'm hoping that my friends will say ‘Yea' or ‘Nay' and steer me in the right direction, because I don't ever get a chance to shop, so I'm probably going to go craaaazy!" said Ms. Meester, posing on the red carpet in a mini Marc Jacobs dress. "They're in there already. I'm doing this."  read more »

In their Gossip Girl recaps, New York's Daily Intel writers are fond of saying that Leighton Meester's Blair Waldorf has a different writer from the rest of the show. It's a funny conceit, the idea that there is some David Mamet-of-teen-soaps ghostwriting the delicious dialogue that Blair spouts each week. But we think that's just ignoring the obvious, discounting the talent of Ms. Meester. Perhaps everything Blair says seems heightened because an actual actress is delivering the lines. It's time to give the girl some credit!

We know it sounds like faint praise. A votive candle could out-act Blake Lively, and as appealing as most of the other actors and actresses are, none would have made the late Lee Strasberg stand at attention.  read more »

Question: What did polite city-dwellers do, say, the weekend of November 2, 1929, with the markets fully imploded but the world-historical ramifications not yet clear and the breadlines not yet formed?

Answer, if that depression was great like this one: Attend a screening of the latest teen sex comedy (or is that teen-sex comedy?) at the Tribeca Grand.

This past Sunday it was Sex Drive, an oddly restrained little composition in the American Pie school whose craftsman-like simulation of raunch almost made up for its workmanlike impression of heart. The thrill might be gone (surely as much the Daily Transom's problem as the film's), but the mileposts were reached with unimpeachable alacrity: virginity, semen-involving hijink, astonishingly attractive best-friend girl understood as edgy due to darkness of hair, improbable set-up of road trip leading to sex-opportunity (sexportunity?), execution of said road trip, sight gag involving an elder gentleman's scrotum, an imbecilic Seth Green as Amish mechanic, complications to said road-trip and said sex-opportunity, mutual realization of unspoken more-than-friend status with best-friend girl.  read more »

Anna Wintour's new competition is the editor of Russian Vogue, Aliona Doletskaya. [NYT]

Meanwhile, French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld is flying in on Friday to catch the last day of Fashion Week. [The Cut]

Lanvin is reportedly in talks to sell a share of the company to a buyer in the Middle East. [WWD] 

Naomi Campbell began to serve her 200 hours of community service in London yesterday. [Vogue UK]  read more »

Apparently, an increasingly coherent and aware Britney Spears is upset about her mother Lynne's forthcoming tell-all, Through the Storm. The book reveals, among other things, that the pop star lost her virginity at 14 and began drinking in middle school, along with embarrassing details about Britney's many, many crack-ups. No longer content to act as a passive, panty-less A.T.M. for everyone in her circle, Spears is "furious" with her mother, especially since she thinks Lynne "caused so many of her problems and issues" to begin with. We're inclined to believe her--history tells us that just about everything can be blamed on overbearing, childhood-denying, money-hungry stage parents.  read more »

It's getting hard to keep up with all the planned 30 Rock guest appearances, isn't it? We need a calendar.

Last week Jennifer Aniston was announced. Then Oprah joined her. And now, Entertainment Weekly has confirmed that Gossip Girl stars Leighton Meester and Blake Lively will appear on the multi-Emmy nominated comedy during November sweeps in a flashback as former high school classmates of Tina Fey's Liz Lemon.

As fans of both shows, this mash-up is like a dream come true. But considering that neither show has any real audience to speak of, is this a wise move?  read more »

On September 4, former Ford model Abigail Lorick will debut her Spring '09 collection. Ms. Lorick's line, Lorick New York, is the real-life fashion line behind Eleanor Waldorf's fictitious fashion house on Gossip Girl. According to Steven Rojas, a spokesperson for Archetype Showroom (which will be producing Lorick's New York Fashion Week show), Blake Lively, Taylor Momsen, and Leighton Meester have been invited. But it won't be the first time that they'll be seeing Ms. Lorick's latest collection.  read more »

Spotted—also, striped, plaid, and fringed: all said looks were spied Sunday night in a display window at the Henri Bendel flagship on Fifth Avenue. The mannequins, as much as mannequins can be, were less silently bored than articulately, deliberately insouciant: the one on the far left held in her bent left hand a petite Sony Handycam; it was noticeably turned off, and angled at five o'clock, as if the spectators gathered on the sidewalk were obvi(ously) nothing worth committing to tape. Two places to her left, a blond had conjured the year's most fraught sartorial heresy: turquoise thigh-length stockings with color-matched open-toed pumps.  read more »

Justin Bartha, who is dating Ashley Olsen, used to yell and curse at former girlfriend Lydia Hearst. [P6]  read more »

Leighton Meester goes on Conan O'Brian and totally doesn't act like Blair. [Daily Intel]

The newest pseudo-intern at the Vogue mothership is New York Ranger, Sean Avery, who like most Conde interns might travel to the European couture shows with Anna. [WWD]  read more »

Everywhere at Once, Village East Cinema, 1:15 p.m.

can’t help but think that inspiration for Everywhere at Once must have been born during a late-night heavy-talking/drinking session…in this film photographer Peter Lindbergh and “experimental filmmaker” (uh-oh) Holly Fisher collaborated to “weave together a tapestry of images” using Mr. Lindbergh’s photographs and clips from the 1966 Tony Richardson film Mademoiselle starring Jeanne Moreau. Ms. Moreau narrates using a poem by Kimiko Hahn. Got it?

Donkey in Lahore, Village East Cinema, 3:45 p.m.  read more »