Minnie Mouse in Lanvin.

There's been much to-do over the Barneys holiday windows that were unveiled this week. While last year's amazing and somewhat controversial Lady Gaga collaboration pushed the envelope, this year, for some baffling reason, the retailer decided to partner with Disney.

Luis Fernandez, senior vice president of creative for Disney Consumer Products, had said that concept behind this collaboration made total sense from a retail perspective. "We thought, ‘A huge force in fashion and a huge force in animation," he said in a recent interview. "What better than for these two companies to get together and do something for the holidays?'"

But controversy began to swirl like a wintry storm back in August, when images from the five-minute "Electric Holiday" short now playing in a constant loop in Barneys windows appeared on WWD. The pictures showed a tall, lithe Minnie Mouse wearing Lanvin, which served as an immediate call to arms from plus-size advocates and celebrities, who slammed the "Skinny Minnie." Dancer Ragen Chastain circulated a petition trying to get Barneys to "Leave Minnie Mouse Alone!"

http://youtu.be/jU01jBw9HB4

However, there were no protests, nor a drop of mouse blood thrown during the unveiling of the windows last Wednesday night. Sarah Jessica Parker, who makes a cameo in the video, presided, and all was quiet, including the windows themselves. Not a figure was stirring, not even the world's second most famous mouse.

There were no Gaga-esque light shows, nor intricately animated puppets performing a Christmas tableau. No animals riding animals, no snowflakes, no animatronics.

Instead, passersby were treated to the above video of Minnie imagining herself at France's Fashion Week-- alongside other famed fashion (real and imagined), including Suzy Menkes, Linda Evangelista, Cruella DeVille, Juergen Teller, Anna Dello Russo, Captain Hook, and the Chesire Cat.

The Disney-Barneys collaboration is a far cry from Barneys' usual holiday fare. Last year's Gaga Workshop resembled a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-by-way-of-Madonna explosion of exhibits and interactive amusements. You could purchase chocolate shoes! Disco stick lollipops! One window was just filled with hair as a tribute to the musical. Another had Gaga sitting astride a giant unicorn in a semi-digitized wonderland. The collaboration even extended to a micro-site, the 12 Days of Gaga. (The site is currently being used to house the "Electric Holiday" video.)

"You know, Barneys always does funky stuff," said a town car driver leaning against his ride, watching the display while waiting for pickup. "That Lady Gaga window last year was wild. This is ..." He paused. "This is fine."

When we passed by the following night, a guy was taking a video of the entire movie with his iPhone. A woman in Chanel glasses hung back on the sidewalk with a friend. We asked her what she thought.

"Oh, it's good," she said, shrugging. "I just don't know who that person is supposed to be." She was pointing to a shot from the runway scene, where a cartoonified version of fashion blogger BryanBoy wearing Mickey Mouse ears watched Minnie strut her stuff.

Fears that the movie would incite cases of a Minnie-related eating disorder seemed unfounded, as two European tourists attempting to interest their daughter in the video were ignored. She pulled them along, remaining uninterested in Skinny Minnie.

Ultimately, the Barneys holiday windows hardly seemed different from the video displays littering Times Square, except for the fact that the luxury store was working on a much smaller scale. It was, we surmised, as far from "high couture" as you could get.

We decided to get a reaction directly from the source. For the first time in our lives, we actually went looking for one of those overly confrontational suit-wearing characters in Times Square, and spent 20 minutes thrust in a world of life-size Woodys, and Hello Kittys, and one guy dressed as Batman.

Finally, we ran into Minnie Mouse, with Mickey trailing behind her. We stuffed two dollars into her damp, synthetic fur paw and asked her, "How do you feel about Barneys making you into an anorexic model, Minnie?"

She responded with a pose, her dead, lifeless eyes boring into our souls:

Well, if she didn't seem to mind, neither would we.

Julie Ragolia and Carlos Campos at his autumn 2011 presentation.

Julie Ragolia has seen more stars in their skivvies than you could dream of! After sinking her teeth at MTV and a slew of glossies eons ago, she moved up the nasty and competitive ladder of fashion editorial... These days, she serves as the fashion editor of 7th Man Magazine and styles mega-stars, such as Rihanna and Sean Combs. Despite his Napoleon complex, street photo Scott Schuman even made her the cover girl of his treasured tome, The Satorialist. The Observer tried to find out if she gets to sleep with any celebs and what exactly stylists do aside from playing with clothes and acting bitchy in the Prada showroom...How did you become a stylist?

It just sort of happened, really. I didn't intend to become a stylist, but I guess it was meant to be. A series of steps toward an academic future in philosophy, with a deep concentration on aesthetics, mixed with some youthful curiosity and a story to tell, led me to a very extended study of fashion as an art form, with clothes as my medium.

Fashion week must be chaotic for you-- what does this season bring?

This is the most fun chaos. I feel lucky everyday for my job, and styling shows is the icing on the cake. This season I am styling two shows: Carlos Campos, with whom I have been collaborating for four seasons now, and TheGreenShow. TheGreenShow is especially exciting for me, as it's the first time designers working in a decidedly conscious, ethical manner are showing at the tents. It's a group show of 8 women's designers, including United Bamboo, who are creating beautiful clothes in consideration of such things as environment, fair working conditions, artisan craft and local production. Hopefully this show will take some of the stigma out of terms like "eco" or "bio", so that such considerations are no longer even a part of our thinking...they just are.

Being a stylist isn't all parties and glamour—what do people not understand about the gig?

That it's a lot of work! You're right, it's not all parties and glamour; it's consideration, and research, and a deep, constant study of the craft, not to mention keeping on top of art, music and all things political in order to keep viewpoints continually fresh and interesting. And sometimes there's a lot of stuff to lug around. Being a stylist is my gym.

What designers inspire you? Who is hot in your mind right now?

I'm inspired by so many designers, but season after season I always come back to Raf Simons and Dries van Noten as inspirations. Both capture the ability to be loud and quiet at once. It's an immense skill, and something I always try to achieve in my styling work.

What's your most awful experience as a stylist? What's stressful?

I'd  be lying if I said I never had an awful experience as a stylist, but they're so few and far between that it's not even worth mentioning. I'm really grateful to be able to tell stories with clothes, and so appreciative that people like what I do that, even if there is a bad moment, I know there will be just as equal a good one to follow. In terms of stress, I think the only real stresses are those I place on myself to always do better, to hit harder. And customs issues at crunch time.

If you had a dream offer to style—who would it be?

That's a hard one! I've styled quite a few from my dream list already...I saw David Beckham in his underwear before he was on the side of H&M bags. I'd love to style someone like Tilda Swinton, who has such powerful presence. She has such distinct style unto herself, that it would be an intimidating but fun challenge. I did tweet recently that I would love to tweak Drake's style. He has so much potential.

Where has the market developed for stylists?

Media has opened the door for stylists to have a greater public presence beyond fashion. We star in commercials, we host events, we collaborate with brands, etc. And as we ourselves become a brand, our images compel some of us to the level of celebrity. It's a crazy phenomenon, really.

What are your social plans? Any good after parties?

I haven't been to Le Baron yet since it opened, even though it's just near my apartment! I'm horrible about going out in the winter, but am looking forward to fashion week pulling me out of my hibernation. I'm also looking forward to celebrating Anna Bauer's book, Backstage, at the New Museum.

Where does a stylist shop?

I think it's more about how a stylist shops, to which I would answer, "unintentionally." I never really go out of my way to shop, but I know I do it because new clothes consistently appear in my closet. I do still get giddy every time I walk through Barney's though.

What sucks about fashion?

If anything, that some of the emphasis has shifted to popularity over content or talent with the infiltration of bloggers or personalities into every aspect of the industry. I'll forever stay a stickler to the analytical thinking of great fashion journalists like Cathy Horyn, Tim Blanks and the likes, as opposed to personal opinions in quips, or anecdotal self-dressing.

Aside from Walmart, Nordstrom is the store every retail broker in the city dreams of harpooning and reeling into a new home. One prominent broker familiar with the store, the amount of space it needs and the rents it would probably be willing to pay estimates that the commission for handling its lease would be around $10 million.

But like a leviathan lurking beneath the waves, the department store has offered only fleeting glimpses around the city, most notably at several development sites and a few existing assets with the capacity to accommodate its sprawling footprint.

The scuttlebutt nowadays: Nordstrom is contemplating one of two leases, one at the West Side rail yards with the Related Companies or another at the base of Extell Development’s soaring new residential tower now rising at 157 West 57th Street.

Illustration by Zack Nipper

According to brokers familiar with Nordstrom’s search, the options are emblematic of the dilemma that has kept the retailer bouncing around Manhattan for years. The department store is ideally searching for a roughly 250,000-square-foot box, a commodity so rare in the city that the only major department stores that have it—Macy’s and Saks among a short list of others—are ones that have been established in the city for decades and hence had a chance to address their real estate needs before the market became as expensive and supply-starved as it is now.

The solution, of course, has been for Nordstrom to accept a smaller space with a layout that is atypical for a traditional department store.  Many brokers say the template for this configuration is the Bloomingdale’s on Broadway in Soho, where the retailer had to greatly reduce the size of its store and tailor its clothing line and layout to appeal to the type of shoppers in that neighborhood.

A similar reshuffling of the Nordstrom concept would likely be necessary to bring the chain to Extell’s project, brokers told The Commercial Observer. The attractiveness of the rail yards stems from an assumption that the company could design a building from the ground up to meet all of its specifications.

But the rail yards are considered a new frontier in the city with little retail connecting the site to Midtown, making a deal there a gamble if the neighborhood takes longer than expected to develop into a popular destination for shoppers.

Extell’s development, though perhaps ill fitting for Nordstrom, would place it at the center of Midtown and near the Time Warner Center, a successful high-end retail mall in Columbus Circle that has helped designate the neighborhood as a retail hub.

Nordstrom has been linked to that area before. Last year, developer Stephen Ross bought the mortgage on the office building 3 Columbus Circle with the intent to foreclose on the property, raze it and erect a new tower with Nordstrom in the base. The deal fizzled when Joe Moinian, 3 Columbus’s landlord, held onto the property by recapitalizing the building with SL Green.

The trade-off between location and compatibility has been a conflict for the company for more than five years. Nordstrom almost had a deal to move into an office tower that was to be built by Stephen Ross and Harry Macklowe on the former site of the Drake Hotel at 57th Street and Park Avenue.  A person directly involved in those talks said that lease eventually crumbled because Nordstrom pushed the physical limits of the project, insisting on towering ceiling heights and other amenities.

“They wanted 18-foot ceilings,” the person said. “You could literally do two office floors for every floor that they wanted. They placed themselves out of the game by needing too much.”

The office building at 650 Madison Avenue, not far from the Drake site, has also been a location that Nordstrom has considered. According to brokers, the issues plaguing that property centered around the likelihood that nearby department stores like Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman would balk at or even bar its vendors from supplying Nordstrom with the brands that they sell, which would essentially prevent Nordstrom from being competitive.

“None of the existing department stores are going to roll over and give into Nordstrom without a fight,” the broker said, adding that he wasn’t “100 percent certain that they have given up on 650 Madison.”

Perhaps out of necessity, the company has poked around downtown, reportedly checking out an anchor tenancy at the World Financial Center office complex as well as the retail being built at the World Trade Center. Here again, brokers said, Nordstrom has expressed a preference to be in Midtown.

dgeiger@observer.com

Lady Gaga arrives at Barneys (Photo via Patrick McMullan)

It's a parent's worst nightmare before Christmas: Lady Gaga's new holiday stocking-stuffer line at Barneys, unveiled on Monday, which is sure to be included on every little monster's wish list this year. Cookies shaped like meat dresses? Yes. Necklaces that look like exploding disco balls and/or guns? Yes. A chocolate Alexander McQueen shoe styled after Gaga's own wardrobe? But of course! And all at(relatively) low prices...how could you say no?

Lady Gaga's Workshop--which looks like Andy Warhol's Factory had a drag baby with Willy Wonka's-- offers items ranging from expensive couture (Erickson Beamon's exploding disco ball necklace retails for $1,630) to surprisingly cheap (seriously, less than $100 to eat a shoe replica of McQueen's? Why didn't the Met think of this??)An egg that opens to reveal a miniture Gaga herself is only $35. As the singer herself told The New York Times:

“Oh, it’s fun...It’s the dream of what music and culture are all about, and those are things that can get lost when you focus too much on commercialism. This is, for me, a much more whimsical approach, a Pop Art approach.”

That's right. Sometimes there is too much focus on commercialism in the art world. That's why we put out lines at Barneys as well.

The 10-year, fixed-rate loan will be part of a U.S. conduit offering priced later in the summer, which will be securitized by Goldman Sachs and Starwood Capital, according to Ronnie Levine, the managing director at Meridian who negotiated the loan.

"This transaction's size and structure are highly indicative of the reemergence of the large loan and CMBS markets," Mr. Levine said in a statement. "Meridian was able to quickly evaluate our client's financing options, vet the loan to our broad national network of capital providers, and develop an effective solution tailored to our client's financing needs. This is not a transaction that could have happened so quickly even six months ago."

rli@observer.com

When the Daily Transom rang Poppy King, the downtown lipstick designer whose clients include actresses Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan and the model Iman, she was so amused by our Poppy series that she immediately told us an anecdote about the first time she met someone with her exact first name at a dinner party last year. This happened to be the British model Poppy Delevigne.

According to Ms King, she and Ms. Delevigne were attending a birthday party for Teen Vogue photo director Jennifer Pastore (formerly of the New York Times Style magazine) when they were introduced.

"Until then the only person I had ever heard of called Poppy was Jamie Oliver’s daughter," said Ms. King. "We were talking about vintage, because she was admiring this dress I had from Topshop. And she said, 'Yeah, I have some great vintage, because my mum was really friendly with Twiggy and Barbara Hulanicki from Biba.' And I was like, 'Oh, well, yeah, you probably do have some really great vintage!'"

Unlike our other Poppys, most of whom moved here from England, Ms. King, 36, is from Australia. When she was 18 years old and was frustrated with never finding lipsticks that had the right shade or texture, she founded her own lipstick brand under the name Poppy Industries. The company grew to become one of the largest cosmetics companies in Australia, but dissolved in 2002 when Ms. King was approached to move to the States and become a "trend spotter and color designer" for Estee Lauder.

After three years, she left the company to write a book, Lessons of a Lipstick Queen, published in 2008 by Atria Books, and subsequently founded her own company again, this time named Lipstick Queen, which is now sold out of Barneys New York and Henri Bendel. (The Observer's own Simon Doonan blurbed Ms. King's book, writing, "Poppy King is the Henry Ford of lipsticks and she shows you how to be a plucky entrepreneur without losing your flossy-flossy.")

"Lipstick is the most misunderstood cosmetic. Women are intrigued by it, but they don’t know how to wear it without looking overdone," said Ms. King. "So I decided to go back to it and demystify it in a way and this time I wanted the product to be the focus, with me sort of secondary."

Ms. King said that changing the name of her company had nothing to do with disliking her name, which was more of a phase she outgrew when she was younger.

"My mother knew a woman named Poppy and she just loved the name. I have a brother and his name is Justin, so it’s not like my mom was a hippy or anything like that," said Ms. King. "She just loved it. And she is a huge fan of Art Nouveau—she’s sort of a Parisophile—so she already collected things with Poppys on them and when I came along she decided that was the name. But I haaated it. I absolutely hated it."

Ms. King continued: "I was so angry at her. You couldn’t get any of those novelty erasers or pencils or pencil cases or name tags or number plates with the name Poppy on it. I just felt so weird having this name. So when I was 9 or 10, I decided I was changing my name to Debbie. I bought a coffee cup that had a rainbow on it and the name Debbie written on it. I put it on my desk at school and said that that was all I would answer to." (Ms. King wrote about this in her book.)

And how did her mother react?

"My mum was horrified!" recalled Ms. King. "She was a bit like Morticia Addams who would get horrified by Pugsley wanting to join scouts or do anything normal. She liked things to be very unique and so that was my ultimate form of rebellion—saying that I was going to be called Debbie!"

Why Pierce and not Bush?

"It’s my middle name," the sunny 24-year-old told the Daily Transom. "Yeah, I kind of debated that for a while, but in the end I decided to go with Lauren Pierce. It’s definitely still my name, but it’s a little bit more incognito. For me the line is so much more about the mission and the fabrics and I didn’t want it to be based on me. Obviously I am the designer and I designed it, but it’s not just about that." (Perhaps the fact that Ms. Bush's uncle, the former president, was often criticized for his lack of eco-consciousness was another reason for keeping the Bush name off the environmentally sustainable line.)

Ms. Bush’s new line of dresses, blouses and shorts in hemp silk and bamboo is, in some ways, a continuation of her bag designs for the nonprofit FEED Foundation, an organization she co-founded in 2006 to fight world hunger, but is a bit more elegant and wearable. (There are only so many functions where the burlap totes emblazoned with the word "FEED" seemed appropriate, even if Ms. Bush herself wore them to the dressiest galas and balls.)

“All the patterns that you see are hand-dyed fabrics that have been dyed in Africa by women in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo],” said Ms. Bush, pointing to the rack of colorful, nipped-waist dresses dyed in a more sophisticated version of tie dye. (Ms. Bush was also wearing one of the dresses with a belt and heels.) “The mission was to use artisanal talent—for these women this is their traditional way of dying things—but to also make it into a contemporary silhouette. And something easy to wear, but also unique because no one dress is the same, no two patterns can be replicated.”

According to the Barney's sales team, much of the collection has already sold since it was put out on Friday. And who does Ms. Bush see wearing her designs?

"Someone like myself," she said. "I guess most people who would respond to it would be more socially conscious, but also just fashionable. I didn’t want to overdesign it and overcomplicate it. I think people that have bought it so far haven’t even been friends and family to my knowledge, so that’s sort of exciting."