I used to snigger when I’d come upon Vogue’s lazy-seeming reasoning behind a trend: “It feels right, right now” or “It feels fresh.” But after reading Eric Wilson’s so-called investigative story in The New York Times about the arrival of the round glasses trend, I now realize that Vogue is onto a pretty basic truth about why we like what we like — sometimes, we just do, if for no other reason than we crave change. Because no matter how much so-called evidence one turns up about why so many designers fall for a certain style, as Wilson does, and why we all follow it, any reasoning for something so subjective seems contrived. Besides, as Wilson points out, the last time round shades were hot was in 1989 — and as every experienced style observer knows, two decades represents the life cycle of nearly every trend, from music to makeup to sunglasses.

When even Karl Lagerfeld makes a completely unsubtle market-whore move that proves the opposite of prescient, you know you’re living in roller-coaster times. For Chanel’s latest Paris-Russia collection ad campaign, the Kaiser dressed up the Moscow-born goddess Sasha Pivovarova in a bounty of hyper-explicit Czarist booty. No doubt, when the shoot was planned last fall, Lagerfeld, like everybody else, was counting on the oligarchs to remain conspicuous-consumption maniacs. Alas, even those gilt-laden lads and their mistresses have cut back and the privately held Chanel was forced to lay off 200 staffers earlier this year.

Straight from the school of Zoolander fashion photography! Ginnifer Goodwin with gigolos in W!

Despite the forced image subversion — the story is titled, “Goodwin Goes Bad” — ooh — let’s acknowledge the really serious reality check of the shoot. With relief from the cliche of girl love in favor of boy love — replete with jealousy, S&M and plywood — we’re getting something just a tad more reflective of the real, ah, cliches of fashion world, don’t you think?

Mr. MILF is so a man of These Times! Until I read Eric Wilson’s piece about men’s shorts in today’s NYT, I always thought Mr. MILF was being his usual anti-fashion, picky self when it came to purchasing a nice-looking pair of shorts. Perpetually on the hunt for bottom-wear for our steamy Saturday-night dates that work just as well for daytime work picnics on Long Island — something, in other words, a couple steps above cut-offs that look neither golfy nor effeminate Eurotrash, but instead flattering in a manly, surfing kind of way — Mr. MILF has been settling summer after summer for Patagonia and O’Neill, when he should be able to find shorts that are both appropriate and hot from more serious men’s wear designers — at mid-range prices, instead of the atrociously expensive — $650 for Tom Ford! $1,450 for Thom Browne! — shorts featured in Wilson’s story. Anybody else sense a gaping wide opportunity in this otherwise bleak retail market?

This is not an illusion! Isabel Toledo is the coolest American designer today, and among our greatest talents. That our First Lady loves Toledo imparts all kinds of street cred — on Mrs. Obama.

p.s. The congratulations is for Toledo’s retrospective at FIT.