One week after Oprah Winfey told Entertainment Tonight about a run-in with an allegedly racist sales clerk in Zurich, the sales clerk is fighting back, calling Winfrey a "liar" with "absurd claims."

The design director of Lindsay Lohan's handbag line, 6126, says she is "working with [Lindsay] as usual" even though she's in rehab. We're assuming "usual" means ignoring Lindsay when she calls ranting about adding secret pockets and glittery tassels?

For anyone who's ever considered counterfeit luxury products harmless-after all, what's a fake Vuitton or Chanel bag, or some faux-logo Coach or Fendi?-Scientific American has a study in its new September issue that may make you reconsider.

Central Park: it's sacred space worth billions. But it will be public forever! It will never be sullied by the hand of commerce, or turned into a commercial venue! Except for the huge silver Chanel "Mobile Art pavilion," modeled after a Chanel handbag, that will descend on the park this fall. But it's really an art…

Heroic woman of dance Madonna has been working for almost a year on a documentary about the obscure African nation of Malawi, her pet cause ever since she adopted a son from the country in 2006. The Material Girl tells Interview magazine (in editor Ingrid Sischy's farewell issue) that, at the time, she "didn't know…

We are loving "Deluxe," the book about how the luxury market went mass market by Dana Thomas, Newsweek's culture and fashion writer in Paris. Today's excerpt concerns the counterfeit market, from the suburban housewives who sell the goods to their friends at purse parties to the gangs of New York who actually move the…

In "Deluxe," Dana Thomas, Newsweek's culture and fashion writer in Paris, writes about how the luxury market went mass market. In this little excerpt, she looks at the swelling and obsessive handbag market—and takes a trip to an Hermes workshop. (By the way, the book is blurbed by both Fareed Zakaria and Richard…