Chicago-based Hart Schaffner Marx, the suit retailer favored by Barack Obama, has added this to its homepage:  “Dressing Presidential. Pick Your Power Suit. President-elect Barack Obama Found His at Hart Schaffner Marx.” [WWD] 

Marc Jacobs would like to marry Lorenzo Martone, if the latter will have him. [The Cut]  

Karl Lagerfeld has released a Chanel bag based on the house’s quilted 2.55 classic released in the '90s and celebrities like Katie Holmes, Milla Jovovich and Lily Allen are already wearing it. [WWD]  read more »

In a story encompassing the increasingly dreary art, society, and financial worlds, The New York Times reports that Alberto W. Vilar has been convicted of 12 counts of securities fraud. Mr. Vilar, a 67-year-old Cuban immigrant, was charged along with his Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc. partner, Gary A. Tanaka, who was only convicted on three of the counts. The two men were in trouble for putting clients' money in unstable technology stocks, as opposed to the more reliable investments they'd claimed to be making. After a series of bad decisions and a market plunge in 2000, the pair switched to fraud, depositing millions of client money into their personal accounts.  read more »

The first round of a rare committee chairmanship fight in the U.S. House is over, with Henry Waxman, who is seeking to grab the powerful Energy and Commerce gavel from John Dingell, winning a vote of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, 25-22.

The outcome is hardly final, and Dingell will now appeal the matter to the full Democratic caucus, which will probably vote tomorrow.  read more »

Waxman's initial victory, however, is noteworthy because the Steering and Policy Committee, which makes formal recommendations to the whole caucus on committee assignments, is packed with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's loyalists. Pelosi has been publicly neutral in the Waxman-Dingell contest, but there are

Despite some evidence suggesting that Michael Bloomberg doesn’t have the authority to stop the $400 property-tax rebate checks from going out, the mayor told reporters this afternoon that the issue is fiscal, not legal.  read more »

ALBANY—He hasn't declared victory, but Eric Massa is certainly acting like a congressman.  read more »

The City Council approved today a proposed rezoning of the Lower East Side, putting in height limits for new buildings throughout the area.

The Bloomberg administration has pushed the rezoning as necessary to both boost the amount of below-market rate housing in the neighborhood and to scale back the incidences of skinny skyscrapers that have popped up. The rezoning, which covered 111 blocks, generally keeps densities similar to those that exist currently, increasing them in some spots, though it establishes height caps of up to 80 and 120 feet.

The city estimates the rezoning would allow for 1,670 new apartments in the area, 560 of which would be below-market rate.  read more »

At his birthday party Tuesday evening, Project Runway winner and increasingly legitimate designer Christian Siriano was in high spirits as he made his way around Citrine on West 21st St., pausing for impromptu dance-offs with friends and later, grinning over platters of cupcakes festooned with sparklers. (The Daily Transom didn't manage to sample one, but they looked good.)

Post-dessert, we asked Mr. Sirano if he had any special goals for the evening.

"To have a fabulous party with every fabulous fashionista."

Did he feel old?

"No! I’m 23! I feel young."

At what age, we wondered, might be start to feel the weight of mortality?

"Never, I don’t think.  read more »

At a press conference in Brooklyn this afternoon to announce tougher rules to home heating oil meter-readers from overcharging, Michael Bloomberg was asked by a reporter how he heats his own home.

“It’s oil,” Bloomberg said.  read more »

On Tuesday, Jonathan Rose Companies broke ground on the first affordable housing and mixed-income apartment building in East Harlem developed to LEED Silver standards. Called Tapestry, the 12-story, 185-unit building, with 8,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, will rise at 124th Street and Second Avenue, at the base of what's becoming today officially the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge.

The Observer sat down wih Jonathan Rose in September of 2007 to talk about green development.

"I don’t think the green movement is seen as being crunchy granola and wearing Birkenstocks," Mr. Rose said then. "I think the green movement is taken seriously in the investment world."  read more »

Last week, we told you about 50 new retail locations (or expansions) opening up all over the city, as was detailed in a brochure from Prudential Douglas Elliman. We discovered that companies like Burberry, Rock & Republic, West Elm, and Vera Wang are fearlessly trudging ahead with new outposts despite current economic conditions.

Following this somewhat encouraging news, in the last week we've heard about small boutiques struggling to stay alive, and Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue reporting $44 million and $42.8 million losses respectively in the third quarter. But this didn't seem to faze Elliman chairman Faith Hope Consolo and executive vice president Joseph Aquino of the firm's Retail Leasing and Sales division, as they are now marketing five new retail spaces to the few companies that currently have the means to expand.  read more »