The economic downturn must be hitting home right now for Derek Lam, who has reportedly been losing $1 million a month, and expects his label to have lost between $12 million and $15 million by the end of this year.

A 'fashion industry insider' told Page Six, "It's only propped up by money coming from Italian investors". The Chinese American designer started his career at Michael Kors before setting up his own label, Derek Lam in 2003. According to the source, not only is Lam coming across hard times with his finances, but his CEO, Jan Schlottman is rumoured to have only turned up to work three times throughout August - something he strongly denies. "Everyone has had difficulty this year, but the actual [monthly] figure is far less than that." He claims that he only had ten vacation days that month, and had his laptop with him at all times. Lam won the CFDA Perry Ellis Swarovski Award for New Designers in 2005, so lets hope for his sake that he doesn't have the bad luck that Peter Som experienced with label Bill Blass back in 2008.

American fashion designer, Narciso Rodriguez, whose clients include Salma Hayek, Claire Danes, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Rachel Weisz, has received the title of Mercedes-Benz Presents designer this season. This means that the German car manufacturer will underwrite and support Rodriguez’s up and coming collection scheduled to show at the Bryant Park Tent on September 15th.

“Narciso Rodriquez is a perfect choice to be the Mercedes-Benz Presents designer as his clothes are designed and executed with the same precision, structure and attention to detail as a Mercedes-Benz,” Fern Mallis, SVP of IMG Fashion, said.

“My Spring 2010 Collection was greatly influenced by the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth. The three dimensional and graphic shapes that are her work became a constant source of inspiration while I sketched and created the coming season,” Rodriquez said.

Ever since Dutch supermodel, Lara Stone, was signed by IMG in 2006, she has become one of fashion's most in-demand models with a distinct and edgy tomboy style; a style we can now get a piece of for ourselves.

Stone has personally picked out 50 of her most loved pieces for the September curate section at Not Just A Label, an uber-cool online shop specialising in selling young designers’ pieces. The site will provide all Stone-style admirers with a unique insight into her taste in clothes. “She loves leather, very tomboyish stuff,” says NJAL co-founder Stefan Siegel. “She basically wanted to choose all black, but when we asked her to choose some colour she fell in love with an orange felted shift dress - and it was by a recent graduate from Ravensbourne College.” Stone’s top four items, all modeled by herself of course, have been renamed as the Lara Stone micro-collection.

Welcome to the first installment of 'Behind The Scenes At Fashion Week', which sees The Fash Pack interview some of the industries most influential people that work behind the scenes at the shows to help make fashion week what it is.

DJ Sam Young, is a case in point and is the go to person on the London clubbing scene. Having worked as a DJ for over 10 years, it's hard to find a hot event in London that does not have his name all over it. His talent has won him praise from the likes of Naomi Campbell, Donatella Versace and Elton John to name a few.

In this interview with The Fash Pack, Young explains why he loves fashion week so much and his best and worst fashion week experiences to date.

Read more after the jump

When you're Kate Moss, you can pretty much do anything you want. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that the supermodel now has a role on a new reality TV show. Documentary crews have been following A-list hairdresser James Brown, who happens to style Moss, for months. The point of the show? To show what it's been like to open Brown's (very) high-end salon in London.

"You should do accessories and build yourself up," Moss says in a scene shot at the salon's opening-night party. "Sorry, Mum," Brown says back. You can bet we'll be watching E4 for more.

It seems that our fashionable purses are not the only ones being hit hard by the dreaded 'r' word: the recession is not only affecting our buying habits with clothes, but magazines, too. Ad pages and news-stands sales are undoubtedly down across the board for our favourite monthly magazines, so could this be why the likes of magazine giants Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar are changing their approach to the fashion consumer?

Recently, there has been a noticeable rise in the number of fashion magazines containing articles about the high street wonders that will transform our wardrobe, within budget. In hard times, it is easy to understand why readers would find it almost inappropriate to be shown garments costing half as much as the average car, with models that are below the nation’s average dress size and have been air brushed to perfection. And so in step the ‘Stylish Steals’, alongside countless celebrity covers and in a further attempt to keep relevant, and more importantly, realistic in these economic times, there is a rise in the link between fashion magazines and reality television.

First to create the attachment was Elle, with Project Runway, ironically now sponsored by Marie Claire. Then came a series of links between the two sectors popping up - Marie Claire’s very own reality television show, Running In Heels, resulted in a boost of single copy sales after its premiere on the Style network. We saw Elle’s Stylista - a reality show in which competitors fought for an internship at the magazine. Although it won’t be returning for a second series, Elle has managed to stay on the reality show bandwagon by hiring Olivia Palermo, famous for being on reality show The City, in a PR assistant role in time for the second series of the hit show. More recently, Vogue allowed readers behind the scenes not on the television, but on the big screen, with the release of R.J. Cutler’s documentary, The September Issue. It is rumoured that the next collaboration between the worlds of magazines and television will see Harper’s Bazaar getting their ‘Fabulous at Every Age’ feature onto our screens.

Read more after the jump

Model: Megan Fox

Editorial: Fox

Magazine: Wonderland

Issue: 18

Photographer: Mariano Vivanco

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Models: Hana Soukupova, Jon Kortajarena, Joan Pedrola, Ali Stephens and Valentin Savchenko

Editorial: Let's Do It All Over The World

Magazine: V

Issue: #61

Photographer: Will Davidson

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