2.  Rodale, which published Women’s Health, Men’s Health, and Prevention is launching an e-commerce channel devoted to healthy, sustainable, recycled fashion, beauty, and toys, and home goods.

3.  Yves Saint Laurent’s video of a primping, partying, kissing, skateboarding Cara Delevingne, to promote their new Baby Doll mascara, is just totally awesome.

4.  Donatella Versace and J.W. Anderson are collaborating to give Versus Versace more room in the spotlight.  A seasonless, standing collection of classics are available online this week, immediately post-unveiling.

5.  Our friends over at PR Couture dug up the three easiest-to-use Web-based alternatives to Photoshop.  And they’re all free. Bye-bye, undereye circles.

Will fashion editors ever get a break?

Just kidding.  But the industry’s attitude toward Fashion Weeks in general seems to be that bigger is better.  Armani’s appeal to other designers is based on Milan’s perceived waning influence and a desire to turn that around.  To do so, Italians who show elsewhere (ahem, Donatella Versace) would need to return, making the city’s Fashion Week bigger (if not longer), more important, and less likely for editors to skip it in between London and Paris twice a year.  After that flap a few seasons ago in which organizers in charge of Milan tried to change their dates, forcing everyone else to adjust to avoid overlap, it’s notable that they’re now willing to truncate the shows by a day if it means more important editors actually show up to the event overall.

The growing influence of London Collections: Men’s reflects the importance of luxury menswear in general, which continues to grow at a faster pace than women’s.  Besides getting longer, LC:M has gotten marquee brands like Alexander McQueen and Burberry to join its line-up, quickly making it a reasonably important event for editors and buyers to attend.

And don’t forget, Sydney’s Fashion Week is turning into a can’t-miss, too.  With all the travel, how will editors get the time to editorialize?

The average consumer has 7.4 retail loyalty cards (“card” being physical or digital) but only uses 63% of those.  There’s a need for differentiation, “in a market that relies heavily on monetary means of influencing behavior,” Robinson explained.  “Things other than ‘points’ drive behavior.”  For fashion brands in particular, Macdonald and Robinson think it’s key to cultivate loyalty via benefits beyond just points for purchases.

BaubleBar is among retailers offering rewards for activities besides making a purchase.

Maritz’s study found strong evidence “that customers are expecting recognition for behavior beyond a purchase — advocating for the brand, posting reviews online, etc.”  We can think of a few retailers who actually cater well to this expectation — Gilt Groupe offers points, good toward eventual discounts, for logging into the site daily and sharing purchases on Facebook, while Kate Spade Saturday rewards customers who share items on their social networks or “favorite” products on the site.  (Of course, both retailers award points for actual purchases, but that’s a given.)

Beyond that, one of the keys to program differentiation is tailoring programs to suit customers on an individual basis.  Enter the importance of data collection.  Maritz created a continuum, “from cool to creepy,” to calibrate how customers felt about the use of their information.  Notably, they found that “regardless of gender, age, or income, the percent of customers who are generally concerned about privacy is the same.  We expected the Facebook generation to be less concerned, but they weren’t.  What differs is how comfortable customers are with specific use of their information,” Robinson explained.  “One of the ways fashion brands can connect is on Facebook and Twitter.  While 53% of participants overall would like to receive benefits for having liked or followed something on those platforms, 65% of the under-35′s find that ‘cool and exciting’ as opposed to ‘creepy.’”

Beyond that, Macdonald pointed out the importance of “value exchange” — basically, that a consumer will provide more information after trust is established.  “Consumers become more willing to progress the relationship, and there are more things they’re willing to give up in exchange for what the brand will give up to them.”

Last but not least, mobile is still key. 94% of Maritz’s 6,000 respondents want communication from their loyalty programs, but at this point, only 53% think the communications they’re already receiving are relevant.  Meanwhile, almost three-quarters of customers who use smart phones and tablets would be interested in loyalty programs through these devices, and a whopping “91% said they’d be into downloading a loyalty app.”

Building an app just for a loyalty program might sound like a lot, but it’s imperative for high-end fashion brands to engage consumers this way. Maritz’s studies found a direct link between affluent households and the proclivity toward loyalty programs. “Households with more disposable income might just be shopping more.  Therefore, they can derive more benefit because they’re spreading more income across a larger number of programs,” Robinson pointed out.  As a retailer, you wouldn’t want to be the one offering the loyalty card that sits in the wallet, unused, would you?

The way the two are launching the capsule line speaks to a few trends in luxury fashion.  First up, Versace is changing Versus’ offerings to provide, concomitantly, a standing seasonless collection of the brand’s classic looks alongside the seasonal collections from different young designers (of whom Anderson is the first).  By providing online images of the brand’s archives along with actual ready-to-wear, Versace embraces its heritage, the same way Courrèges and Jean-Paul Gaultier have done over the past couple years.

Meanwhile, launching the latest Versus Versace line, with an upcoming series of designers at the helm, prevents intra-brand confusion.  Versus won’t accidentally cannibalize the main line, à la Dolce & Gabbana’s D&G line, which the designers eventually folded into the marquee label.

Last but not least, playing to the Internet audience, most of the Versus Versace classics will be available immediately online after they debut in New York tonight (you’ll have to wait a little longer for the J.W. Anderson collection, which will be available beginning June 15).

What’s also important here is that these brands, under the agreement, won’t work with factories who refuse to upgrade their safety standards.  So while the Western companies are required to foot the bill for renovations and repairs, they will also sever ties with domestic factory owners who refuse, for whatever reason, to make their buildings safe.   Last but not least, companies are required to allow independent safety inspections of the factories, a practice that was sorely lacking before.

And, on an excellent related note — as of this week Bangladesh’s garment workers are legally able to unionize without seeking permission from their factory owners first.  Now let’s just hope that protection is enforced.

Other brands who produce their clothing in Bangladesh have been asked to sign the safety agreement by tomorrow.  We’re looking forward to seeing who else gets on board.

One look from Stewart + Brown.

The eponymous venture, Rodale’s, will offer conscientious design across a range of categories including women’s fashion, food, toys, beauty, and housewares.  In keeping with the publisher’s titles, which promote healthy living, the products on the site are all either ethically sourced, sustainable, or recycled.  The idea behind the venture is to provide solutions, at the consumer end, that come from a shared mindset as the publisher’s various overall life-improvement titles.

Fashion brands Rodale’s will sell include Melissa Joy Manning (maker of sustainable jewelry), Stewart + Brown, which specializes in high-end but low-impact eco-fashion, and the well-known Eileen Fisher.  At this point, though Rodale is promoting the new site across its magazines and online channels, none of the titles’ editorials directly promote the new division.  As with Condé’s new venture, it’ll be worth noting, going forward, how that changes and affects what happens in the magazines’ pages.

Rodale’s opens to the public on May 20.

2.  With the help of a start-up called 52Grams, Instagram is becoming increasingly shoppable.

3.  Mango launched an online magazine.  Key outfits, fashion editorials, blogger interviews, New York street fashion…we’ll read it (and shop it).

4.  Just a confirmation that it’s okay that your Pinterest boards are engulfed in recipes, gardening tips, fashion, and animals.  A marketing study confirmed this week that the brands with the best feedback on the social network are exactly those embracing and offering all things typically feminine.

5.  We thought Myspace was dead and mostly forgotten, too, but Gucci went ahead and made a Myspace page.  From what we can tell, it’s not ironic whatsoever.  If you haven’t deleted your account, you might want to connect to them.

Pinterest gets most of the attention for being highly visual, sartorially inspiring, and yet frustratingly difficult as a channel to buy what you see.  On a picture-by-picture basis, Instagram presents about the same problem.  52Grams sets out to solve this problem by offering a platform for brands and bloggers that renders their Instagram feeds much easier to buy from.

For retailers and “style influencers,” aka bloggers, 52Grams extends a general invitation to host their Instagram feeds.  Participants subsequently tag their photos with sources to buy what they’re wearing, converting those feeds into shoppable lookbooks.  For the general audience, just log into 52Grams through your Instagram account, collect your favorite styles in “stacks,” share them with friends, and most importantly, discover where all those looks you like actually came from in the first place.

Instagram: it’s being smartly leveraged for e-commerce before the outcry about how it doesn’t work for e-commerce can even get that loud.

The social media measurement company Unmetric studied 5,000 branded pinboards in March of this year to find out who was generating the highest levels of user engagement, in the form of likes, comments, and repins, plus sheer number of followers.  The secret to success seems to lie in offering all the stereotypical content for which Pinterest has fast became known as a clearinghouse.  Animals, gardening, weddings, weddings in gardens, recipes — Unmetric found that brands offering this content have by far the most robust user engagement on the social network.

Of the winners, several came from fashion and retail.  L.L. Bean’s most popular board, which actually won the category for the highest number of followers, within branded content, is called Woodland Creatures.  It features what the name implies (and for what it’s worth, it’s really, really cute.  4,689,706 followers agree).

Swarovski, meanwhile, came in first in the “most likes” category, for a board titled Wedded Bliss (160,120 likes and counting).  Nordstrom scored well across a couple categories for a Garden Wedding Ideas board, which came in third for having the most followers (4,199,549) and fourth in “most likes” (84,565).  Rounding out the fashion and retail pack, interestingly, is Etsy, whose Yum! Recipes to Share board came in fifth of branded content boards with the most repins, at 249,195.

Though Pinterest might take flack for being stereotypically girly, being girly is what it’s good at.  So take note, retailers: for winning an engaged audience, animals, weddings, and food seem to be the golden tickets.