The first Fashion's Night Out was held this past Sept. 10 and was successful in getting crowds out to hundreds of stores in New York City, which stayed open late for designer and celebrity appearances, live windows, musical performances, book signings, and to sell merchandise. Fashion's Night Out was also held in several major cities around the world and will next year again go global.

But while the traffic was strong, many retailers felt people were much busier partying than shopping. However, for the second Fashion's Night Out, it's expected more incentives to shop will be added. A fashion show of fall 2010 styles for consumers is being considered as well.

The company is researching the option, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gregg Steinhafel said yesterday in an interview at Target's Minneapolis headquarters, adding that the retailer has no definitive plans or sites for such stores. "We know that consumers in dense urban areas love Target," Steinhafel said. "We have to work harder at trying to get a smaller Target in those areas."

Target plans to open more U.S. stores in metropolitan areas as well as remodel existing locations to add groceries and encourage more frequent visits. On its earnings call yesterday, the company said it's planning for a "modest" decrease in fourth-quarter sales at stores open at least a year as shoppers continue to pare discretionary spending.

Tests at Target's Atlantic Terminal store in Brooklyn and two or three other urban sites may help the retailer prepare for smaller formats, Steinhafel said. At those locations, Target pruned the number of items available by as much as 25 percent by cutting certain sizes and colors of products to ensure the stores are well-stocked, he said. Target’s general merchandise stores average 128,000 square feet.

That partly explains his ambivalence about the Council of Fashion Designers of America and its annual awards. Speculating about why he has not won in the women's wear category for several years, he remarked, "Because they're stupid! No, it's not true. I'm really not this egomaniacal monster that you might think I am. My team and I, we've gone to the CFDA awards year after year after year, and we always feel we've done the best collection. That's not to say there aren't other great collections....I don't believe in these prizes. I don't watch the Academy Awards or the Emmys or the Tonys. I only go to the CFDAs because if I don't go, Anna Wintour calls up and says, 'You have to go because you're part of the American fashion industry, da da da da da,' and you can't say no to her. So you sit through this thing as everyone tells you you're going to get it, and then you don't get it, and then everyone tells you it should have been you. You're like, whatever. You go home empty handed one more time, and it's fine. We have nine of them," including from years when they were perhaps not as well deserved, he said.

Asked to name the next Ralph or Donna, he declined, saying many young people have talent and passion, then mentioned Alexander Wang. When a question about celebrity designers came up, Jacobs noted Lindsay Lohan's failure at Ungaro, but complimented Victoria Beckham. "She is someone who has always wanted to design clothes. She knows the body, she loves it and she's working her ass off," he said. "It's too easy to say nobody who’s celebrated for something else shouldn't do fashion."

The response to Levi Strauss put it at 83 on the customer satisfaction meter, up 6.4 percent from 78 a year ago. That's just below Levi's all-time high of 84 in 1994 — and the first time the brand has held that much appeal for the 100,000 people polled annually about their buying habits in the 15 years since then. The satisfaction index is pegged to a baseline of 100.

The classic denim brand has been lifted, in part, by its optimistic, youthful, pioneering "Go Forth" marketing message, said spokeswoman Erica Archambault. "It is a reminder that Levi's are jeans of people who work hard, are self-reliant and independent." Also clicking with shoppers, Archambault said, are "innovative" finishes, such as Levi's "rips and repairs, destructed look."

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Like Levi Strauss, Liz Claiborne received its best customer reviews since 1994, advancing 3.8 percent to score an 82 (versus 84 in the first-ever index). Affordable offerings in Liz Claiborne's Kate Spade and Juicy Couture collections, as well as the addition of Isaac Mizrahi to design Liz Claiborne New York, led consumers to "see more value" in the company's apparel, Fornell said.

The bamboo used in textiles has to be heavily manipulated to go from stem to store. To create fabric, it's chopped up and dissolved in toxic solvents—the same process that recycles wood scraps into viscose or rayon. Indeed, bamboo fabric technically is rayon.

The Federal Trade Commission sued four small bamboo-clothing manufacturers in August, citing them for false labeling, among other concerns, under the 1958 Textile Fiber Products Identification Act. The companies had used language such as "natural," "biodegradable," and "antimicrobial." But bamboo fabric isn't natural, the FTC said, since it's a textile developed by chemists. The agency also said the biodegradable and antimicrobial qualities of the plant don't survive the manufacturing process.

In a bulletin titled "Have You Been Bamboozled by Bamboo Fabrics?" the FTC said that bamboo fabrics "are made using toxic chemicals in a process that releases pollutants into the air."

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But some wearers have other gripes about bamboo. Mr. Giardina, the FIT professor, says he found that bamboo fabric is unstable and likely to stretch out of shape in damp weather. Uniform Knitters Ltd., a Hong Kong apparel manufacturer, abandoned bamboo fabrics because they tend to shrink and have odd variances in color, according to a company spokeswoman.

Iconix Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Neil Cole is looking for acquisitions to add more brands that the New York- based company can license to retailers and manufacturers. "Neil Cole has done a phenomenal job of taking some of these lost brands and developing them into something," said Gilbert Harrison, chairman and CEO of Financo Inc., a New York- based adviser and investment bank specializing in retail. "Certainly Playboy would fit that mold."

Playboy's management has been looking for a buyer since Scott Flanders was appointed as CEO in June, one person close to the situation said. Flanders, the former CEO of Freedom Communications Inc., replaced Christie Hefner, who had run Playboy since 1988 and is the daughter of Hugh Hefner.

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In addition to its magazine, Playboy licenses products bearing its bunny logo, and creates videos for its Web site and cable-television networks. Licensing revenue in the first nine months of the year declined 14 percent to $28.1 million.

Playboy magazine garnered a following for its fiction, including selections by Margaret Atwood and Vladimir Nabokov, and American football coverage, as well as its photos of nude women. The company ran a chain of branded clubs, staffed by women dressed in bunny outfits, as well as a premium cable channel and branded videos and DVDs.

This holiday season, retailers are betting big on the snood, a cross between a scarf and a hood that, when worn over the head, is reminiscent of a babushka. The trend emerged on the Fall 2009 runways of designers like Missoni (knit snoods) and Burberry (plaid snoods) and also made an appearance in the commercial collections of Donna Karan and Yves Saint Laurent. Now it's gone mainstream, with retailers ranging from American Apparel to Zara getting behind the loopy style with snoods of varying lengths and monikers. The British version of GQ magazine's Web site recently posted a "Guide to Snoods," suggesting wearers try it "over a chunky knit or tailored jacket."

A few weeks ago Bloomingdale's urged customers to "make sure that you're seen in this lavish new accessory." Henri Bendel ranked the snood second amongst its top ten "things we fancy for fall" while Saks Fifth Avenue included it in its "Want It" fall campaign. "Gossip Girl" star Blake Lively was photographed in one on the show's set last month.

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Burberry, whose chief financial officer recently cited the snood as one of the top drivers of the company's fall accessories sales, attributes the snood's rise to consumers' desire for safety in tumultuous times. "I love this idea of protection that it gives," says the brand's creative director Christopher Bailey, who was so into the look that he showed snoods for men and women on almost every model at his fall 2009 runway show. Simon Kneen, creative director for Gap Inc.'s Banana Republic brand, also likened the accessory to "a Linus blanket," a reference to the blue security blanket always carried by the Peanuts cartoon character.

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Traditional snoods, which resembled hairnets, were popular in the 1940s when women used them to keep their long hair out of the way. In the 1950s, the snood morphed into a tube, which became a ski-slope staple, says Beth Dincuff Charleston, a professor and fashion historian at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York. This time around, the style has been transformed: The creation of snoods in colorful plaids, fur and prints, as opposed to just polar fleece, renders them "new and fresh," says Ms. Dincuff.