From left, spring looks from Eighteenth, James Long, Wes Gordon, and Mary Katrantzou.

Paris couture week wrapped up on Wednesday evening at Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, where Valentino’s Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli sent out a breathtaking collection inspired by Enlightenment philosophes (Rousseau lovely!). Now it’s full speed ahead to the New York shows, which kick off on February 8, followed by fashionfests in London, Milan, and then back to Paris. The latest crop of awards provides a handy cheat sheet of emerging—and in some cases, downright emerged—designers to watch this season:

Fashion Group International took over the uptown NYC outpost of Cipriani yesterday for its annual Rising Star awards luncheon. Designers Isabel and Ruben Toledo offered keynote remarks, while presenters including Ralph Rucci and Thom Browne announced the winners: Wes Gordon and Nonoo’s Misha Nonoo (who tied for the top honor in the women’s ready-to-wear category), Simon Spurr (menswear), Blythe Harris of Stella & Dot (accessories), our Twitter pal Wendy Brandes (fine jewelry), Joe Manus of Shiner International (home/interior design), David and Kavi Moltz of D.S. & Durga (beauty/fragrance entrepreneur ), IFF’s Celine Barel (beauty/fragrance corporate), and Vasken Demirjian‘s Vasken Salon (retail). Check out the full list of finalists here.

Earlier this month, winemaker Ecco Domani announced the seven winners of the 2012 Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation awards (read: $25,000 grants), and the list is full of superfresh faces. The womenswear honorees are twin sisters Daphne and Vera Correll‘s twice-as-nice label Correll Correll, breezy Eighteenth by Alexa Galler, Julie Haus and Jason Alkire‘s Haus Alkire, and Sunhee by Seoul-born designer (and Geoffrey Beene alum) Sunhee. Rounding out the list are Tim Coppens for menswear, Dezso by Sara Beltran for accessories, and Titania Inglis in the sustainable design category.

And across the pond, the British Fashion Council (BFC) recently announced the four designers that will receive Fashion Forward sponsorships (read: satchels of cash) to show their collections in London for the next two seasons: womenswear designers Henry Holland, Louise Gray, and Mary Katrantzou, and menswear maestro James Long, who is the first menswear designer to receive support through this scheme. The awards program, established six years ago to help emerging British designers show and develop their businesses in London, also includes access to business support provided by the BFC.

In our innovative 4-week online Job Search Boot Camp starting January 31, you’ll launch a job search strategy, build your personal brand, and learn valuable interviewing skills with career coaches and advisors. Read what our grads are saying about their experience. Register now.

After surviving a very rough and tumble summer, starting around mid-October, things were began looking tough again for both the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim and the Louvre wing that was also set to go up in the Middle Eastern cultural hub, and it only got worse from there. First, there was a semi-innocuous delay on the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim there, blamed originally on some government contract disputes. Then, as more news was released about a mass of unpaid bills and the entire United Arab Emirates quickly pulling their money out of any and all cultural projects to focus instead on Arab Spring-related matters, it was sounding like both projects might be entirely abandoned. So dire did it seem that the Guggenheim was quick to ramp back up their interest in building a new arm in Helsinki (though this could have been just convenient and beneficial timing). However, it now seems like perhaps both the Guggenheim and the Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre extensions have been placed back on track and all the worry may have been for naught. Yesterday, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Development and Investment Company announced that work will soon resume on the projects, as well as the surrounding Saadiyat Cultural District in which both will call home. The only thing changed will now be the opening dates, pushed back by a number of years. The Louvre, originally set to open sometime next year, is now slated for 2015. The Guggenheim, also originally set to open in the next year or two, has been pushed back to 2017. A long time to wait, for sure, but both institutions must be breathing a sigh of relief in knowing that, at least for now, the projects haven’t been abandoned.

What started as but a rumor back in 2008, and followed by the slow progression of hiring an architect and then hunting for donations, is finally all starting to come into factual fruition for London’s Design Museum. This week the organization unveiled a first look (pdf) at what will become their new home sometime in 2014. Build upon the former home of a government-funded research institute, the new space has been designed by John Pawson and is estimated to cost somewhere in the $100 million range to develop. The move is set to not only give them “three times more space” but also put the Design Museum closer to the city’s other cultural touchstones, like the V&A, the Royal College of Art and the Serpentine Gallery. In addition to this first batch of official details, the museum has also released this quick video tour of their soon-to-be new digs:

Pruitt-Igoe. Cabrini-Green. Mellifluous hyphenates that have evoked, in turn, hope, pride, fear, terror, shame, and utter disappointment in utopias, razed. In The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, filmmaker Chad Friedrichs wades through the thicket of emotions aroused by the infamous public housing project, built in the early 1950s by the St. Louis Housing Authority, to examine what comes between optimism—for 33 pristine, Minoru Yamasaki-designed high-rises that promised to solve the problems of overcrowding in a then-booming inner city—and disillusionment, with a vertical ghetto that, just two decades later, was leveled and declared unfit for habitation. This documentary is complex and fascinating: a chilling clash of Modernist zeal, postwar urban decline, and racial tensions that plays out through an incredibly rich (and masterfully edited) collage of archival footage and the individual stories of a handful of former Pruitt-Igoe residents, who share their memories against a backdrop of optic white. “So much of our collective understanding of cities and government and inequality are tied up in those thirty-three high-rise buildings, informed by the demolition image,” notes Friedrichs in his notes on the film, now playing at the IFC Center. “Too much of the context has been overlooked, or willfully ignored, in discussions of public housing, public welfare, and the state of the American city. Pruitt-Igoe needs to be remembered and understood—in a different way that it has been—because the city will change again.”

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is now playing at New York’s IFC Center. Click here for a schedule of upcoming screenings nationwide.

Brad Goreski wasn’t always the beacon of style he is today. In our Media Beat interview, the star of It’s a Brad, Brad World revealed that he had to overcome a lack of access (he’s originally from a tiny town in Canada) and the doubts of others to climb to the top. One college career counselor, in particular, was quite taken aback by a young Goreski’s outsize ambition.

“She’s like, ‘Okay, so what do you wanna do?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m gonna get an internship at Vogue in New York.’ And she was like, ‘Excuse me?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m gonna get an internship at Vogue. Is that possible for me to get credit and go to New York?’ And she was like, ‘If you get the internship…’ And I was like, ‘Okay!’” Goreski told us. “And I came back later with all my paperwork, and she was like, ‘Are you really going to New York?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah! I’m going to work at Vogue!’”

Now, with a hit show on Bravo and Born to Be Brad: My Life in Style So Far due in bookstores in March, the taste maker credits those early work experiences for his success.

“Internships are so instrumental but, not only do you need to get them, you need to work at them,” he said.

Part 1: Breakout Styling Star Brad Goreski Takes Us Inside His Brad, Brad World
Part 2: Brad Goreski Sets the Record Straight on His Relationship with Rachel Zoe

Art and design fans have much to look forward to in the coming weeks. Here are our picks of the latest and greatest not-to-be-missed events in NYC:

What’s more fun that art forgery? A talk about the colorful history of art forgery by Milton Esterow. The ARTnews editor and publisher takes to the stage tomorrow evening at 92nd St Y for “Fakes, Frauds, and Fake Fakers” (we adore that title), a sure-to-be-fascinating look at how forgers have created convincing imitations of masterpieces, as well as works that mimic the styles of great artists, duping collectors, dealers, and even the experts themselves. Don’t bother trying to forge a ticket to this talk; buy a real one here.

On Monday, January 30, Moleskine hosts an evening of interactive portrait-making at Exit Art. Stop by the reception (6-9 p.m.) to “explore the many ways to capture a portrait using Moleskine objects” with featured artists including Emilie Baltz and Nathan Sensel. Text-portraits, sound-portraits, taste-portraits, photo-portraits, and more are promised. RSVP here to be sure that your name in their little black (guest) book.

Cooper-Hewitt director Bill Moggridge kicks off a new year of Bill’s Design Talks with a tribute to Eva Zeisel, who died a few weeks ago at the age of 105. Joining Moggridge on February 9 at The Greene Space will be art critic Jed Perl (The New Republic) and the designing duo of James Klein and David Reid (KleinReid), who collaborated with Zeisel on a series of ceramics and prints. Register here to attend. There will be also be a live webcast.

But back to people named “Milton”! On February 16, Milton Glaser comes to Brooklyn’s terrific powerHouse Arena for an exclusive discussion and signing of his new book In Search of the Miraculous (Overlook). A $10 ticket saves you $10 off the price of the book, in which Glaser highlights work, largely created by him over the last five years, to demonstrate how one concept leads to another. Bring on the fascinating juxtapositions.
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Fans of The Rachel Zoe Project may have noticed that the star stylist doesn’t take kindly to staff members striking out on their own (and isn’t above launching smear campaigns when they do so). Her former protégé, Brad Goreski, found this out the hard way. He appeared to part with Zoe on good terms toward the end of season three of her reality series, but by season four, she was lobbing criticisms and allegations of client-stealing at her once-beloved style director. In this second segment of our Media Beat interview with Goreski, he opens up about his relationship with Zoe—or lack thereof. “It’s strange that it turned into this whole thing, because to me, it’s a very logical thing to assist somebody and then, after a certain amount of time, choose to leave ad go go off and do your own thing,” says the star of the new Bravo series It’s a Brad Brad World. “I think that’s a really natural progression.” As for the alleged client swiping, Goreski sees this as a non-issue. “Can you really steal people, and especially people who are celebrities?” He asks. “They choose who they want to work with.”

Part 1: Breakout Styling Star Brad Goreski Takes Us Inside His Brad, Brad World
Part 3: How Brad Goreski Got an Internship at Vogue

This week, ChicagoStyle Weddings is hiring a creative director/designer, while Amour Vert is in need of a graphic designer. Jones Lang LaSalle is looking for a graphic designer, as well, and Rock Creek Strategic Marketing is seeking an interactive art director. Get all the details on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on mediabistro.com.

• Creative Director/Designer ChicagoStyle Weddings (Elk Grove Village, IL)
• Graphic Designer Amour Vert (Palo Alto, CA)
• Graphic Designer Jones Lang LaSalle (Chicago, IL)
• Photo Editor Martha Stewart Weddings (New York, NY)
• Interactive Art Director Rock Creek Strategic Marketing (Washington, DC)

For more job listings, go to the Mediabistro job board, and to post a job, visit our employer page. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

You may have considered either 2010 or 2011 to have been the year(s) that popular street artist Banksy possibly hit his career high, becoming a near-household name with his documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop and then, later, its Oscar nomination. However, with the 2012 Olympics soon arriving in his native England, some are speculating that this could be Banksy’s most prolific year. As such, spotters are on the lookout and they have recently found perhaps the first piece by the artist this year. Though it’s certainly difficult to verify such things, given that the artist is keen to maintain his mysterious recluse mystique, most it seems are considering this to be the first real deal of the year. Here are some details:

It appears to have all of the hallmarks of a real painting by the artist and would be the first new year offering by Banksy. 2012 the Olympic year is expected to be a big year for the artist as all eyes are now focused on the capital.. The stencil turned up on the corner of an office building on Oval Street in Kentish Town (near Camden Town) and many followers of the street artist have already identified the painting as a Banksy. It possesses all of the his irreverent stencil features including a distinctly political statement.

Well if this just isn’t the way of the world, particularly within the building industry, then we don’t know what is. After carefully maneuvering big hurdles like raising enough money, and much smaller ones, like cleaning up some graffiti, the long awaiting opening of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and its new home designed by Zaha Hadid, has been delayed due to a factor few would have likely considered: glass. The Lansing State Journal reports that because Hadid’s building features panels upon panels of glass that make up the structure’s exterior, the builders have found that some of the 1,000 pound pieces aren’t lining up just-so and will need to be sent back to the manufacturer. The original opening was scheduled for just a few months from now, on April 21st. That’s now been pushed back to “sometime in the fall,” which is the new estimate based on how quickly they can get the correct glass. Fortunately, the paper reports that the delay isn’t expected to add to the expense of the already pricey building. To help bridge the gap until its later opening, the museum plans to launch The Virtual Broad Art Museum sometime next month.