Oh, come all ye peasants, and gather round, for our Peasant Ambassador has an announcement! Dame Gwyneth Paltrow has been named the new face of Coach! How… gauche. She used to be the face of Tod’s, for the love of God. At least when she represented Tod’s, she knew that a peasant would have to shell out four-figures to buy one of her recommended purses. But Coach? Some of those things go for a peasant-friendly $100. GASP. And some are made from (EEK!) nylon. Oh, how the mighty Goop has fallen.

From “Glee” cameos to penning a cookbook and launching a career in country music, Gwyneth Paltrow is clearly looking to cultivate a wider audience and her latest move fits that bill. Coach Inc. confirmed that Paltrow will also serve as a brand ambassador for the international campaign to mark its 70th anniversary this fall and next spring.

Shot by Peter Lindbergh on a Manhattan rooftop, the print, digital and outdoor ads will only be used for select markets in Asia and Europe, including France, Spain, the U.K., Portugal and China.

“I grew up in New York City and I’ve always thought of Coach as the quintessential New York brand,” Paltrow said. “I’ll never forget getting my first Coach bag.”

The images will break in international September books. Coach’s president and executive creative director Reed Krakoff called Paltrow, who in the past played model for Tod’s and Christian Dior, “a natural choice.…She embodies the spirit, energy and elegance of the Coach brand,” he said.

[From WWD]

“I grew up in New York City and I’ve always thought of Coach as the quintessential New York brand…I’ll never forget getting my first Coach bag.” Ugh. Gwyneth continued, “My first Coach bag was given to me by my spiritual advisor/admirer when I was six years old. I asked my father, ‘What is this tacky thing?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, my beloved, we’ll bedazzle this junk with rubies and diamonds, so it will be worthy of you.’ So that was my first Coach bag, and it’s so bonkers (as they say in cultured London), as I was just telling my best friend Beyonce the other day, ‘Isn’t it funny that poor people can’t afford Hermes?’ And Bey said, ‘You should do something about that, love. People need you to speak out on this issue!’ So I asked for counsel from my bestie Deepka Chopra and he said ‘You, my dear Gwyneth, would be a good fit for Kate Spade.’ Isn’t that brilliant? But Madame Spade and I talked about it as we were making caviar meringues, and we decided it wouldn’t be the best fit. Finally, my dear best friend the Dali Lama called me on my rotary and said, ‘I’ve got it, dear princess, you shall be the face of Coach!’ And so it all happened for me, because everything is always about me!”

Photos courtesy of Fame.

I always wonder why Angelina Jolie doesn’t “model” more. It seems like more brands would be seeking her out to be their face, but Angelina’s endorsement contracts have been relatively small (compared to other A-list women). Angelina had a three-year contract with St. John, and a multi-year contract with the Japanese beauty brand Shiseido (I’ve included one of her Shiseido commercials below). Even though some say Angelina didn’t really help sales of St. John, I tend to think that most celebrity “endorsements” of brands simply help define the target audience for the brand – Angelina helped give St. John a boost in profile, although perhaps not in sales. In the end, I think Angelina doesn’t so many endorsement deals because she’s got other junk on her plate.

Anyway, Angelina just scored a big one – one of the best campaigns to front, right up there with Chanel. Angelina is the new face of Louis Vuitton!

Angelina Jolie just bagged a lucrative endorsement deal. E! News has learned exclusively that Jolie is set to be the face of an upcoming worldwide ad campaign for designer Louis Vuitton. The print-only campaign, which is scheduled to launch this summer, will be marketed globally…

A source familiar with the deal between Jolie and the French fashion behemoth tells E! News that the actress will get paid “close to $10 million” for her high-end endorsement deal, believed to be the most lucrative of her career.

We hear that Annie Leibowitz will do the photo-snapping honors within the next couple of weeks.

A rep for Louis Vuitton had no comment. Jolie’s publicist did not return calls seeking comment.

Jolie, who last year ended a long-term endorsement deal with St. John and recently launched a jewelry line, has long been a fan of the brand, often sporting its handbags in public.

Past celeb endorsers of L.V. have included Jennifer Lopez and Madonna.

[From E! News]

Louis Vuitton is wealthy. It’s rich. It’s brand says exclusivity and luxury. Angelina is a much better fit than a lot of the girls they could have gotten (Blake Lively, Madonna, you get the picture). I like it, but you know, I’m a Brangeloonie, so of course I’m going to love it. I can’t wait to see the ads! But they should have gotten Mario Testino – I LOVED his shots of Angelina for the St. John campaign.

Vintage shots of Jolie by Testino & Leibovitz.

This is Scarlett Johansson’s latest ad for Dolce & Gabbana. Scar became the face of the brand… in 2009, I think. Scar fronts a surprising number of ad campaigns – Mango, Moet champagne, Reebok, just to name a few – which doesn’t really comport with the “average, low-key” image she tries to push of herself. She’s not average. Anyway, I rarely like Scarlett’s “model face” because the girl really doesn’t have that many expressions, and her mouth is always open. In the Mango ads, she’s always styled to look rather corpsey, and there’s some of that going on this ad too. Sure, she doesn’t look deathly in this ad, but she doesn’t really look… alive, either. It doesn’t help that every photographer and stylist seems to pose Scarlett reclining on something, like she’s too lazy to actually stand up and pose? At some point, I have to stop blaming the stylists and just blame ScarJo – she just gives off a corpsey vibe in photographs.

In other ScarJo news, her old(er) lover Sean Penn has been photographed a lot over the past few days as he tries to get in shape. Photographers have gotten shots of him jogging and mucking around in the ocean and hanging out with a personal trainer. It’s great that a man his age is taking an interest in exercise, especially given that he’s a smoker, a heavy drinker, and likely a drug user (?). But something tells me that Sean’s new-found interest in exercise isn’t about health. It’s about his 20-something girlfriend.

Ladies, think about this grunting on top of you. That’s all I’m saying.

Photos courtesy of Fame, The Mail, HuffPo.

These are photos of Sofia Vergara and David Beckham filming a commerical for Diet Pepsi yesterday and the day before. Whatever marketing genius put these two together, I salute you. This was a great idea, much better than the super-Photoshopped Diet Pepsi ad that diluted Sofia Vergara’s famous EVERYTHING. Because Sofia is an embarrassment of riches, and every inch of her should be maximized to sell your product. What’s funny is that David Beckham looks like he’s totally having the time of his life filming this commercial with Sofia.

Now, some people have looked at these photos and suggested that David is stiffer than a surf board and that he likely went in for the kill with Sofia, as he (allegedly) has with many, many women over the course of his marriage to Victoria. Those people are probably right, although I doubt Sofia was in to it. When Becks was all, “So, can I get a hotel room and we can see where this goes?” Sofia probably laughed and touched his chest, letting her fingers linger as she said “No, no… I can’t…” And then as she walked away, Becks stared at her ass and started weeping.

Photos courtesy of Fame.

As we all know by now, Blake Lively’s is the latest enhanced rack of Chanel. Blake currently fronts the campaign for Chanel handbags, and her first Chanel ad was photographed by The Kaiser himself, Karl Lagerfeld. Blake even got to go to Paris and be the woman of honor (tits of honor) at several Chanel events. It’s a big deal. But there are some mutterings that perhaps this plastic American (mall) girl who couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag is perhaps the wrong “face” of the famous French brand. Oh noes! According to The Mail and NYDN, there are “internal grumblings” within Chanel (specifically, Chanel’s American branch) that Blake is “off-brand”. Which is a fancy way of calling her cheap. For real.

Karl Lagerfeld called her the ‘American dream girl’, but apparently not everyone at Chanel is as enamoured with Blake Lively as the label’s head designer.

According to reports today, the fashion label’s office in Miss Lively’s native U.S. is less than impressed that the Gossip Girl star has been chosen to represent its Mademoiselle handbag line.

A source told the New York Daily News that there were ‘internal grumblings’ at the Chanel American headquarters.

They said that the star was considered ‘off-brand’ by some U.S. employees, which the paper translated as ‘the bitchy fashion industry’s clinical way of saying that Lively’s contemporary American beauty does not dovetail with Chanel USA’s efforts to sell its fashions as the height of European sophistication.’

The suggestion was quickly dismissed by Chanel’s U.S. press office, which remained full of praise for the actress.

A spokeswoman said: ‘Blake’s spontaneity and fresh youthful image have convinced Chanel that she is the right person to represent the house and this range of bags.’

But the rumoured criticism echoes comments made to Miss Lively herself, when she admitted that she had been waiting for an opportunity from the French fashion powerhouse.

‘I had other opportunities and I would say, “Thank you so much, but I am holding out for Chanel,”‘ she told the New York Times. “’That’s who I want to be the face of.”

‘And people would say, “Well, that’s unrealistic, they only hire Europeans,” and I said: “Well, how great. I’ll be the first then.”‘

But the Daily News’s source claimed that Chanel ‘would literally fire anyone who admits’ they are not happy with Miss Lively as a spokesmodel.

Miss Lively was named the face of the Chanel Mademoiselle handbag line in January after she was introduced to Mr Lagerfeld by U.S. Vogue editor Anna Wintour. The campaign image, shot by Mr Lagerfeld himself, appeared in glossy magazines for the first time this month. It shows the 23-year-old leaning against a wall of mirrored panels allowing for a reflection of both her and her glossy red bag. It is both moodier and more colourful than past campaigns for the collection – Lily Allen’s playful 2008 version was shot in black-and-white.

Mr Lagerfeld, 77, told reporters that the shoot for the ad, which took place at Chanel’s Rue Cambon HQ, ‘was an easy job because everyone fell in love with her’.

Miss Lively herself was also thrilled about the appointment she said at the time: ‘How did Cinderella feel when she slipped on the glass slipper? How did Snow White feel when she met her Prince Charming? A dream come true is an understatement. I can say that I feel like the happiest, luckiest girl around.’

The actress joins an illustrious cast of Chanel ‘faces’ – among them Vanessa Paradis, Audrey Tatou, Keira Knightley and Georgia May Jagger.

The label’s current womenswear campaign stars model-of-the-moment Freja Beha, while its catwalk shows are a roll-call of the industry’s hottest faces, including Lindsey Wixson, Anja Rubik and Karolina Kurkova.

[From The Daily Mail]

While I do think that it’s nice to have a “fashion girl” out there who genuinely seems interested, engaged and happy to be apart of the fashionable crowd, I also think Blake’s critics have a point. It’s great to have a happy, blonde, all-American girl representing a famous brand, and at this point, Blake is “new” and “different” from other fashion girls. But there is something cheap, something down-market, something “off brand” about her representing Chanel. Is it the fake tatas? Is it the fact that she just looks like a mall girl, one of millions you could find at any American mall? Is it the fact that for a “fashion girl” she really doesn’t know much about fashion? Is it because she can’t ever be covered up, and she always has to show off her boobs, her legs, her vagina drapes? Ugh.

Photos courtesy of Google, WENN, Fame.

Right after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, comic Gilbert Gottfried put out a series of incredibly insensitive tweets, some graphic, that made light of the tragedy and mocked the victims. It was shocking really that anyone would think that was ok or somehow funny, and he was fired as the voice of the Aflac duck on those annoying commercials as a result. (You can read the tweets on this link, they’re so bad I don’t want to reprint them.)

After that, Gottfried got canned by Aflac, who issued a statement that this was not ok and did not reflect what they represent:

“Gilbert’s recent comments about the crisis in Japan were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac,” the company, which does 75% of its business in Japan, said in a statement. “There is no place for anything but compassion and concern during these difficult times.”

[via Huffington Post]

Gottfried eventually apologized, but it was one of those apologies that sounds like it blames people for misinterpreting his “humor.” He didn’t say he was way out of line or anything or that he should check himself.

“I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my attempt at humor regarding the tragedy in Japan,” Gottfried, 56, the voice of the duck since 2000, says in a statement. “I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families.”

[From People]

There’s a time and place for humor, and it’s too soon to make jokes like this. It’s not funny and it’s not right. Maybe this ass will realize that now that it’s hitting him where it hurts. Nasal duck voices are a dime a dozen.

Japanese Aflac commercial:

Emma Watson was still in Paris yesterday, filming those Lancome advertisements that just couldn’t wait until Spring Break. Previously, we’d seen her in unfortunate shoes, a frilly pink dress and a leather jacket, topped off with her hair slicked back. Her outfit for this outing is even worse – lace booty shorts, a blazer and a thin tie, with her hair no longer slicked back. And… now we can see that her awkward haircut is the same as Justin Bieber’s awkward haircut. Both hairstyles (the same hairstyle) are pretty bad, and unflattering to their faces.

If possible, these new shots of Emma have made me even more “meh” towards her appointment at the newest face of Lancome. I guess the famed beauty behemoth is aiming for “accessibility” at this point, and yes, I’m saying that in a completely bitchy way. That’s what Emma is – accessible. She’s not intimidating. She’s not inspirational or aspirational. She’s an average-looking girl, styled badly and chosen for this gig to bring in very young female consumers who would normally be buying Wet N’ Wild. This makes me really sad.

Those lace booty shorts are just awful too.

Photos courtesy of Fame.

That was fast. No sooner did Emma Watson drop out of college “take a break” from college and announce her new big career move, a modeling gig for Lancome, then she flies to Paris to shoot the new ads. Why the rush? Usually when someone new is announced as the “face” of a product, it takes a few months for the new ads to be shot. This is one of the fastest turn-arounds I’ve ever witnessed.

Regarding yesterday’s post announcing Emma’s new gig, a lot of you yelled at me for various reasons. While I maintain that Emma is more cute than beautiful (and that she looks much better when her hair is slicked back), and that she’s much, much too young to be representing a beauty brand, I will admit that perhaps I was a bit too harsh about her “taking a break” from college. Quite honestly, Emma announcement, mid-semester, that she was taking a break really, really bothered me. I took my higher education seriously (sort of), and I’m proud of my bachelor’s degree. I honestly think there should be more young, celebrity women and men who take time out of their careers to prioritize education. Maybe Emma will return to Brown… but I seriously doubt it. I think a year from now, Emma is going to announce that she’s decided not to return, and all of those little girls who grew up with Emma through Harry Potter will get the message loud and clear: education is disposable, clubbing with Harvey Weinstein is more important. Not to mention the obvious choice Emma is making in these photos – night shoot in Paris for a beauty products is much more important to her than mid-terms.

Photos courtesy of Fame.

First of all, The Daily Mail is making a huge deal about how Kate Winslet was airbrushed to within an inch of her life in these Lancome print ads. Obviously, that happens, but given that Kate still looks like a version of her natural self, the airbrushing doesn’t offend me like it does when it’s, like, Megan Fox for Armani. Plus, I’m still kind of wondering if Kate’s seemingly odd face in the ads isn’t a combination of airbrushing and Botox/fillers.

That’s not all, though. If you need a really good laugh, check out Kate’s commercial for Lancome:

This is an Oscar-winning actress!! That was the best/worst fake laugh EVER.

Anyway, I guess the British tabloids are having a field day because the old Winslet, circa 2003, would have bitched and moaned and demanded that she be photographed normally, wrinkles and all. But the new, fancy Kate likes her face looking as unlined as a baby’s.

Photos courtesy of WENN. The Mail.

Keira Knightley has been “the face” of Chanel Mademoiselle for several years now, and these are the ads for her 2011 campaign. It seems… phoned in. Not that Chanel ads are ever really groundbreaking or anything, but even Keira looks super-bored, hungry, and like “Why am I here again?” Plus, Keira looks too thin in her face – and this is a thin girl already.

Chanel hasn’t strayed far from the headlines this week – a mesmerising Paris Fashion Week show, news that Lily Allen has chosen a Chanel wedding dress and the debut of its first Blake Lively ad has ensured it’s been the label on everyone’s lips, and now the unveiling of its latest Keira Knightley campaign will ensure that the fashion house stays high on the radar for yet another day.

The stunning shoot first came to our attention back in September, when the Brit actress was spotted filming scenes on Paris’ Place de la Concord, perched on a vintage motorbike in a camel catsuit and coordinating helmet.

Now the first official images have finally hit the web, showing Ms Knightley nibbling on a bottle of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, wrapped in a sheet and clad in that camel all-in-one.

The latest in a string of Chanel campaigns for Knightley, the project marks a reunion for the actress, who teamed up with her Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright to shoot the mini film.

[From Marie Claire]

Honestly, I don’t think Keira should be fronting a major campaign anymore. It’s not just the “blah” quality of these images, or her weight loss, or her faltering film career – I just don’t think she’s interested in getting any kind of attention, at all. In recent interviews she’s been extremely squirrelly and rude, she fronts like any act of promotion is beneath her, and she’s just recently broken up with her boyfriend. It’s a good time for Keira to go away for a while.

I should note this however – while Blake Lively, Lily Allen and other fashion girls have been in Paris this week, bowing to the alter of Lagerfeld, Keira has not been around. She’s doing a play. And she doesn’t give a crap, honestly.

Photos courtesy of Sassisamblog.