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“Why do we need three shawl cardigans?” J. Crew president Mickey Drexler asks a stylish gaggle of his buyers. He doesn’t pause for a response. “We don’t!” Put on your colorblock stripe scoopneck tee and old faithful-wash jeans, UnBeige readers, because America’s favorite hands-on merchant and his latest success story are the subject of a documentary that premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on CNBC. Reported by David Faber (get that man a Ludlow suit!), J.Crew and the Man Who Dressed America unbuttons the piped wool hacking jacket to peek inside the retailer, which has seen revenues rocket by 170%—to $1.9 billion last year—since Drexler took the helm in 2003. Even longtime Drexler followers and die-hard J. Crew fans are likely to learn something in segments that follow the months-long process of conceiving, creating, and marketing a new line of clothing. Did you know, for example, that the production of the J. Crew catalog requires 120 shooting days a year? Or that the Garden City, New York store is something of a laboratory, where window displays and merchandising are perfected—and where new stuff hits racks first? And we like any CNBC program in which a Gerhard Richter book makes a cameo among the cashmere (look sharp toward the end of the first clip below). Meanwhile, we’d love to see Drexler’s motivational mantra on a tissue tee: “Cut back, sell out, and be very happy!”

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Time flies when you’re having fun with photos. It was almost four years ago that Hellman & Friedman acquired Getty Images—the world’s largest distributor of stock photos, video, and other digital content—in a take-private deal valued at $2.4 billion. Since the deal closed in July 2008, Getty Images has expanded its photographer grant program, partnered with Flickr on an imagery collection, launched a site devoted to stock photo rights, and tussled in court with a maker of car air fresheners. The company has also paid out a whopping $875 million in dividends, and now its private equity fund owner is fixin’ to cash out. According to a report in the Financial Times, Hellman & Friedman has retained bankers to examine a possible sale or public offering of Getty Images, with multiple sources valuing a sale or IPO at as much as $4 billion. News of the Getty exit plan comes days after KKR ponied up $150 million for a 50% stake in stock photography manager Fotolia, and Shutterstock filed for an IPO that could raise up to $115 million.

Less than a month after Dieter Rams‘ eightieth birthday, Pentagram will hit the big 4-0. (Coincidence? You be the judge.) To celebrate four decades of eye-popping work, Naresh Ramchandani and Tom Edmonds in the London office whipped up “The Forty Story” (below). The film tells the story of a boy born on the day Pentagram opened—June 12, 1972—and how his life has been tracked (and kerned) by four decades of Pentagram design. Here’s to forty more years.

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Did you get your hands on a bottle of that coral-infused red polish that became a must-have accessory for designing women? Achieve a pedicure that pops thanks to Cato Pink? These trendy shades aren’t the latest creations of Chanel’s Peter Philips but part of a popular series of upholstery-themed nail colors from…KnollTextiles. Founded in 1947 by Florence Knoll (née Schust), the company prides itself on creating fabrics that “combine beauty and function in the Modernist tradition” and recently was the subject of a color-soaked (and widely lauded) exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. What began as a one-off holiday marketing move—the December 2010 introduction of Knoll Red nail polish—quickly gained traction in the design community. Soon Facebook fans were begging for limited-edition bottles of the company’s signature orangey red, and the polish even inspired a tablescape at DIFFA’s 2011 Dining by Design benefit gala. KnollTextiles wasted no time in debuting a second hue: a bright pink tribute to its beloved Cato fabric, which turned 50 last year. Its latest lacquer is Tryst, a pewter-toned polish that celebrates the unique polyurethane upholstery of the same name (pictured above, in the icicle colorway). Designed by Dorothy Cosonas, the elegant horizontal stripe has already attracted some discerning fans: earlier this year, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum acquired the textile for its permanent collection.

Among the perks of attending the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art are the myriad opportunities to fondle the walls of the academic building designed by Thom Mayne, courses such as Architectonics Lab with Professor Lebbeus Woods, and, oh yes, it’s free. But not for long. Sans tuition since 1859, when it was established by bearded industrialist and gelatin magnate Peter Cooper, Cooper Union is now turning to fee-based graduate programs to shore up its shaky finances. “Our preliminary financial analysis shows starkly that new, reliable, and scalable streams of revenue are imperative—over and beyond what an ambitious fundraising strategy may be relied upon to yield, and sooner than a set of options with long term promise can deliver,” wrote Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha in a statement issued yesterday. “Weighing all the alternatives, I am convinced that some fee-based programs are necessary for Cooper Union’s solvency, and that this framework gives us the most optimistic way forward.”

Undergrads are safe for now: all will continue to receive full-tuition scholarships, a commitment that Bharucha promised would extend at least through the class entering in the fall of 2013. However, the addition of any tuition-based programs at Cooper Union is not sitting well with some students, and a walkout is set to begin later today. “Charging tuition at the Cooper Union will require altering the original mission statement of the school which states that the Cooper Union ‘…awards full scholarships to all enrolled students,’” wrote Rachel Appel, a Cooper Union art student and an organizer of Friends of Cooper Union, in an e-mail sent this morning. Bharuca’s announcement came just days before a “community summit” at which the Friends of Cooper Union plans to present various non-tuition based solutions to the school’s fiscal crisis. That meeting will proceed tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in the Great Hall at Cooper Union.

A photography-themed merger is afoot: Hasselblad USA, the U.S. distributor of Hasselblad professional camera systems, has agreed to join forces (among other things) with Bron Imaging Group, which distributes professional photographic gear. The combined company will be known as Hasselblad Bron, a name that conjures an exotic, camera-wielding James Bond villain. The merger agreement follows a two-year courtship marketing relationship, through which the two New Jersey-based companies worked closely to develop their brands in the professional photography market. Michael Hejtmanek, current president of Bron Imaging Group, will lead the new company as president and chief operating officer of Hasselblad Bron, which will relocate to a single facility this summer.

Could we actually be seeing, dare we even let the thought cross our collective brains, a consistent upward trend? After years of being burnt in this exact situation, when the American Institute of Architects‘ monthly Architectural Billings Index would stay in the positive for a few months, only to plummet back and make everyone gloomy, we’re not entirely ready to dust off the helium tank and start filling up the balloons just yet, particularly because the ABI was actually down just a bit from last month. It’s currently at 50.4, a few notches lower than 51 in February, but as anything above 50 indicates an increase in billing, and provides a general sense of growth within the industry, we’ll take it. Here’s a bit from the AIA’s defender of the digits:

“We are starting to hear more about improving conditions in the marketplace, with a greater sense of optimism that there will be greater demand for design services,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “But that is not across the board and there are still a number of architecture firms struggling so progress is likely to be measured in inches rather than miles for the next few months.”

The internet was suddenly abuzz late last week, just before the weekend, when everyone’s favorite French designer Philippe Starck told a newspaper that he was working with Apple on a revolutionary product that would be out in the next few months. That certainly would be exciting, given that the internet nearly implodes when there’s even a hint of something Apple related in the works, and due to Starck’s long legacy in product design. Unfortunately, Starck also sometimes seems to mangle his words a touch, or exclaim lofty ambitions that maybe aren’t so grounded in reality. Over the weekend, Apple released a statement saying that no, they weren’t working with Starck on anything. Shortly thereafter, the Wall Street Journal reports that the designer laid everything out a bit more clearly, explaining that he’s working with Steve Jobs’ family on building a yacht. All of this, of course, makes much more sense, given that Apple generally keeps their product design very in-house (and certainly away from chatterboxes) and Starck now has something of a history building eco-friendly mega-yachts. We liked these couple of sentences the WSJ put together, summing up this recent there-and-gone story:

This episode has proved two things. Anything said about Apple provokes a huge buzz among the company’s followers. And Mr. Starck, who has waved his minimalist magic wand over everything from a toothbrush to a lemon squeezer to a mineral water bottle to penknives to hotels, likes to talk about himself.

Looks from the spring 2012 Jil Sander collection.

“When I was at industrial-design school, we were all expected to like the Memphis Group and Philippe Starck, but I’ve always been attracted to midcentury modernism. My favorite is the French designer Jean Royère. I love the marriage between different things in his work—the aspects of kitsch, premodernism, and modernism, along with an extreme femininity—but there’s also a robustness. Royère’s designs are very eclectic, but they all come from the world he has put together. His work has had a huge impact on me, but I’ve never bought any of it—it’s unaffordable. Recently, a Royère table came up at auction; the estimate was €12,000 to €15,000. I thought, That’s mine. Then I was on the phone with the auction house wondering if I should go up to €18,000. My God! I didn’t have time to say a thing. The thing went to €120,000!”

-Raf Simons, newly appointed artistic director of Christian Dior, in a recent interview with Alice Rawsthorn for W. Among the designer’s other favorite things, lest you want to send him a congratulatory gift: art by Sterling Ruby, Valentine Schlegel‘s ceramics, the architecture of John Lautner, the Todd Haynes film Safe, and vintage Margiela.

Copenhagen-born Jens Risom designed the first Knoll chair in 1941, which puts his age at roughly “two-hundred! Well, that’s almost right,” he said, seated in a high-backed rocking chair of his own design on a recent visit to the Stamford, Connecticut headquarters of Design Within Reach (in fact, he’ll turn 96 next month). This latest DWR Film features morsels of Risom’s chat, in which he discusses his storied career, interrupted early on by a stint in Patton’s Third Army; his creations; and that famous 1961 Playboy photo (above) in which he played musical chairs with George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Charles Eames. Sure enough, he’s still the last one standing.