At day two of Milan’s men’s fashion week, Tomas Meier showed off his knack for constructing that perfectly tailored leather jacket at Bottega Veneta's early morning show. Black and midnight blue reigned supreme at Emporio Armani's modern cool event, where models sauntered down the runway in luxury cloaks with fedoras, sleek modern leather coats, and impeccable silk suits. Ermanno Scervino was all about argyle, intricate and chunky knitwear, paired with simple gray and blue blazers.

Dame Vivienne Westwood is no stranger to philanthropy. From supporting Peruvian Amazon preservation to traveling to Kenya to work on her Ethical Fashion Africa collection, the queen of British fashion is also a leader of compassion, known for going above and beyond for causes that she believes in. Her latest effort comes in the form of a personal £1 million ($1.63 million) investment to launch a fundraising campaign for Cool Earth - a rainforest preservation charity.

We can only hope that we're as vivacious as Vivienne Westwood when we're 70-years-old. The queen of punk fashion recently headed to Nairobi, Kenya to employ 7,000 local women to help make handbags for her Ethical Fashion Africa collection. The project is in partnership with e-tailer Yoox and the International Trade Center, a United Nations Agency. And she didn't travel alone; her longtime friend and collaborator, photographer Juergen Teller, came along to shoot the collection.

As evidenced by the recent buzz around James Van Der Memes, gifs continue to be a popular platform for gaining quick exposure and popularity, which has carried over to the fashion- and design-savvy bloggers (and rebloggers). As one of the few teams taking the gif to the next level, design duo Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader (of Reed + Rader) have been making high-tech fashion editorials for nearly 6 years, employing augmented reality, stop-motion videos, and most notably, animated gifs.

● The results for Vogue's best-dressed poll are in: Lady Gaga wins best-dressed by 42%, beating Blake Lively by 24%. [Vogue] ● Hippies rejoice: The textile knotting form of macramé is in for spring. [Style] ● Actress Hillary Swank is interviewing fashion designers to partner with her on a athletic fashion line. [WWD]

Vivienne Westwood has teamed up with jeans maker Lee to design a line featuring a variety of forgiving styles (think uber loose-fitting knits), including harem-like jeans that take the term drop crotch to new lows. Print-heavy and chock-full of vibrant pinks, reds, and greens, "the collabo launches this July and will feature jeans in a variety of cuts, plus hot pants, and will be sold online at ZapposCouture, Net-A-Porter, and Asos, among others," says Nitrolicious, which landed a sneak peek at the collection. At the same time, the three winners of this year's CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award—Patrik Ervell, Monique Péan and Sophie Theallet—have signed on to design accessories and clothing for the GAP.

A chat with fashion's Grande Dame

Yesterday news surfaced of a bizarre diet trend affecting the fashion set that has nothing to do with calories. Think of it as the master cleanse for your checkbook. Coined 'the American Apparel diet,' it's essentially a pact not to buy clothes for an entire year. As we pointed out yesterday, the whole thing reeks a bit of "a viral marketing thing of some sort, using anti-consumerism to reinforce consumerism in a doublespeak-y, 'absence makes the heart grow spendier' type way." Then again, Vivienne Westwood, the godmother of punk, is already a fan.

The latest fashion victim of the recession: Phi. Susan Dell, wife of the founder and namesake of the iconic computer company, is closing the doors to her NYC-based label come spring. Designed by Andreas Melbostad, Phi is synonymous with sleek silhouettes and sumptuous fabrics (the kind of thing you could see fashion editors at the Boom Boom Room decked out in). "But the pre-spring delivery, which arrived in stores this month, will be Phi's last, and the Phi boutique at 71 Greene Street in SoHo is expected to close at the end of next month," says Women's Wear Daily. The company blames "economic conditions" for the closure.