With Hank Stuever
Sunday, November 5, 2006

Weeks after the trendy L.A. boutique called Kitson sued Us Weekly magazine for not mentioning it enough or referencing its wares bought by a celebrity clientele, I go back and forth on who's really right here. (Kitson, schmitson: Given a day to shop in L.A. for overpriced jeans and sneakers, I'll take Fred Segal. And I mean the belovedly dumpy one in Santa Monica, not the one on Melrose Avenue. The one where I almost always see Jeremy Piven trying stuff on and feel somehow okay about that, and where cameras are shunned.)

Here's the dilemma, nutshelled: For months and months, the editors of Us have cheerfully regaled us with photo captions and gossip snippets of the shopping forays of U.S. (Useless Starlets, i.e., Lindsay, Paris, et al.), who darted in and out of Kitson with promotional aplomb, furthering the Kitson brand -- and sometimes wrecking their cars nearby for added tee-hees.

Now Kitson claims that during that time Us has somehow managed to both invade the privacy of customers and fail to live up to its guarantee to frequently mention and show the boutique's name, logo and merch. (Not being in Us costs $10,000 a week in lost sales, the suit alleges.) The magazine, in return, has had very little to say about the lawsuit filed by Kitson owner Fraser Ross, who himself has become a bit of a celeb. According to the Los Angeles Times, he is under investigation by the FBI because a photo agency he partly owns allegedly tried to hack into the computers at Us and see what articles the magazine was working on.

So, to recap, not only are gossip magazines in cahoots with store owners -- Ross has spoken publicly about his quid pro quo with Us -- apparently the store owners have some hand in hiring paparazzi and selling their photos.

This is ugly fluff, and although it verges on a boring catfight, it's another opportunity to more closely analyze the nutritional content of our gossip cuisine. A true follower of celebrity news knows better than to subsist only on pictures of stars and their latest impulse buys. Those shots may appear spontaneous, but in truth they're more like staged photo ops. Remember, kids, eat your leafy greens: Surf the showbiz trades, the business sections, the wordy parts of Vanity Fair and big, fat biographies about departed icons or fallen industry empires. Don't let a jeans boutique be the one to bring you the news. You'll starve your little mind. What's left of it.

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