Wildfox Couture is one of the hottest brands in the US, quickly establishing a cult following since its launch amongst the fashion and celebrity set alike. Created by childhood friends Emily Faulstich and Kimberley Gordon Wildfox's vintage inspired designs take a nod from days where life was less complicated- think cheerleaders, roller skates, the carwash and rock & roll bands and you will be part of the way there. Stocked in some of the world's leading boutiques including Fred Segal, Kitson, and Planet Blue, Nordstrom, Harvey Nichol's, and Selfridges Wildfox is heading down under with local fashion haven Little Bootique snagging the brand for spring/summer.

Baby, I think I love you! This custom cafe racer was crafted for a recent Chanel photo shoot in Paris. More info at Luxist.

Dita Von Teese is the new face of Cointreau and last night she unveiled her take on the delicious liquor creating the aptly named Cointreau Teese.

Drinking this citrusy concoction at anytime of the day or night is a fabulous idea; for when is it not a good time feathers and sequins?

If you feel like getting your burlesque on this weekend allow Dita to show you the way.

4 cl (1 1/2oz) Cointreau
2 cl (3/4oz) Apple juice
1,5 cl (1/2oz) Monin violet syrup
1,5 cl (1/2oz) Fresh lemon juice

Mix all ingredients together over ice, strain, pour into chilled martini glass with frost ginger on the rim. Drink, Dita, Enjoy.

Looking for something cool to play with? Polyester Records specialize in selling old classics and new indie, alternative, and rock albums. If you're not in to the mainstream pop music, then this is where you should be buying your music. Polyester Records even have an in house ticket booth, where you can purchase tickets to small concerts and up coming gigs. First hand vinyl records are also sold here. Polyester also offer, on their website staff top ten picks for each month so you can always stay up to date will the latest tunes. Polyester have two stores located in 288 Flinders Lane, Melbourne and 387 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. Open Monday to Thursday: 10am - 6pm
 Friday: 10am - 8pm Saturday: 10am - 6pm &  Sunday: 11am - 5pm. 

Design a Space, retail gallery, is giving upcoming local fashion designers the opportunity to rent out an up market space to display and sell their works. With everything from swimwear to homewares this shop has quirky and different fashions to suit almost everyone. Design a Space now is showcasing over 70 independent designers, rotating each month. Their two stores are located on Chapel St, Windsor and Manchester Lane, Melbourne. Opening hours: Sun & Mon, 12pm - 4pm, and Tuesday to Saturday, 10am - 6pm. Check out their website here.

Icon.Inc director Chris Dodds, artist Adam Nash, and OOM Creative's Greg More have secured funding from the Australia Council to research, build and host a series of virtual art labs. Chris and Adam established The Australian Centre of Virtual Art (ACVA) in 2007 after winning OzCo's inaugrual Second Life Artists in Residence grant for their Babelswarm project (with Justin Clemens). The LAB is set to launch in November 2009, and you can follow its progress via the ACVA blog.

The influence of social media has reached a new height, with leading IT public relations firm, Brew PR launching a Twitter only campaign for client, WordNik. But it's not what you think. The campaign was not run through Brew's Twitter account, nor did it use WordNik's. Brew PR made a strategic decision to use the influence and popularity of her close friend Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, to release one tweet mentioning the benefits of WordNik to his 759,310 followers.

The results were outstanding, 1.43 million people saw the tweet about WordNik (either directly from him or by having it forward to them by someone else) by 6pm on the first day of WordNik going live and 400,000 people visiting the WordNik website on the first day. The following week the buzz surrounding WordNik was so strong that USA Today and the Wall Street journal both wrote articles about it.

Another highly innovative campaign was run by Topsy (a Twitter search engine) who also recently ran a single media campaign, choosing to launch on leading technology blog, Tech Crunch. The results were perhaps more exciting, Topsy has over 577,000 search results on Google, compared to the 56,000 for WordNik. Topsy also rakes in 1,184,439 visitors in a slow week, WordNik around only 49,816 visitors in a regular week.

What does this mean? It certainly proves that the power of these online campaigns cannot be ignored... as seen they are a great launching tool and hold enormous interaction and influence to create a campaigns with long lasting results if you can you tap into the right audience or in the case of WordNik the right Twitter account...

With the GFC in full swing the statement shoe is making a serious comeback. Hailed for its ability to change up an old outfit for a fraction of the price of a new one, the statement shoe trend was recently evidenced at the incredible displays of the Spring RTW ‘09 shows with all leading designers producing pieces of art for our feet. There were giant satin clouds and fairy pom-poms for shoes (Givenchy, Chanel), beautiful Amazonian themed tribal wedges (Louis Vuitton, Dreis Van Noten, Marc Jacobs) and a large array of futuristic bondage style patent leather creations.