Fellas who have been bumming out for the past eon about not having any pantyhose made expressly for them can now rest easy. There’s a new trend in town and Women’s Wear Daily is calling it mantyhose.

Racked.com is trying on a few other names for the new product — Brosiery, Guylons, He-tard, Beau-hose — and asking consumers to vote. At this writing, Brosiery was smothering the rest of the competition.

As WWD points out, men having seen this much hose for guys since NFL Hall of Famer Joe Namath donned a pair for a Hanes BeautyMist commercial and Burt Reynolds showed off his nylon-clad gams in a Cosmopolitan pictorial.

Italian fashion designer Emilio Cavallini is leading the charge, looking to expand the 4 million pairs of tights that he sells annually to a new audience: men.

Cavallini's website is  offering at least six different designs of the unisex tights including white or gray side bands, skulls, stars, checks, and horizontal stripes. He has also designed camouflage mantyhose, which may appeal to officers and gentlemen.Continue reading...

Kohl's joined Walmart and a handful of other up-and-coming masters of retailing in spreading bricks-and-mortar stores nationwide during a suburban building boom over the last quarter-century. Now, however, Kohl's real estate ambitions are waning as the mid-priced, discount-savvy soft-goods retailer deals with the effects of online retailing and slower growth overall in its physical stores.

At the same time, the Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based chain, with more than 1,100 stores coast-to-coast, is investing more heavily in its own e-tailing operation, as it faces stiffer competition from Target and the newly revamped JCPenney.

"Online is really the wave of the future, of course, where retail is moving and has been moving — especially for retailers [like Kohl's] that don't have a grocery component," Erika Maschmeyer, retailing analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co., told brandchannel. "They just don't need as many or the same size of stores now with the internet."Continue reading...

Toyota teams with Marvel for a Yaris viral video, above.

Ford hooks up with the 2012 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue for product placement.

The king(size) Snickers bar is dead. Make way for the fun size.

Below: Coke and ScarJo, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Linsanity and more.Continue reading...

Levi's launched its first ever global collection during its Fashion Week debut this week. At its New York Fashion Week show, held in Soho, models were shown getting dressed, riding bikes and other vignettes from daily life in addition to walking the runway in key looks from its first official Fall/Winter 2012 collection.

The collection (by head designers Jonathan Kirby and Jill Guenza; see their inspiration boards here) is "based on a more refined and tailored look, for both men and women. The designs were inspired by the idea of craftsmanship, honesty and authenticity — honoring tradition while defying convention, redefining the norm and re-crafting and re-creating iconic Levi's styles."Continue reading...

It's sexy sex time!

Not to be outdone by all the sexing sex talk between Catholic leaders concerned with religious freedom and the Obama administration's mandate on providing birth control, brands got into the prophylactastic fun.

Are you ready for an almost-entirely NSFW post? Okay! First, there's the Louis Vuitton condom that wasn't.Continue reading...

New York Giants Super Bowl champion Victor Cruz cut the ribbon today in a kick-off event for New York's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, now gearing up to debut Fall 2012 collections starting Thursday morning at Lincoln Center.

There's also a whirlwind of virtual activity in what the HighLow blog calls "the most egalitarian" New York Fashion Week yet, including a Facebook invitation to RSVP to live-streams of the runway shows and join the conversation on Twitter via the #liverunway hashtag.

YouTube and Maybelline will once again sponsor a real-time YouTube channel that will bring 30 of the Fall 2012 runway shows to the world. The runway videos will also be archived at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week YouTube channel.

Cover Girl is partnering with Polyvore and the Fashion Institute of Technology on Polyvore.com/Live, which will see four FIT grads debut their collections to an audience of fashion insiders and bloggers: Lauren Bagliore, Vengsarkar “Ven” Budhu, Sergio Guadarrama, and Dana-Maxx Pomerantz.Continue reading...

President Obama has returned to e-commerce and haute couture with Runway to Win, a collaborative campaign merchandise fundraiser pegged to the kickoff of New York Fashion Week. As fashionistas rev up for the Fall 2012 collections, designers and Dem supporters have been rallying to raise money, chicly, for the president's re-election campaign.

The collection features patriotic clothing and accessories, moderately priced from $45 to $95, from top designers including Tory Burch, Rachel Roy, Derek Lam, Beyoncé and Tina Knowles, Marcus Wainwright and David Neville, Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, Diane von Furstenberg, Narciso Rodriguez, Vera Wang, Thakoon, Jason Wu, Grace Tsao-Wu and Laura Kofoid of Laudi Vindi, Marc Jacobs and Tracy Reese.Continue reading...

Apple knock-off stores in Queens, NY, forced to surrender goods, while Apple's HTC patent victory gets US review.

NHL restricts players from social media on game days under new policy.

Borders starts shutting down in California.

Carrefour plans drive-in stores in France.

eBay targets hip mobile shoppers with new campaign.

Esprit pays the price for 'neglecting' its brand.Continue reading...