Gawker: valleywag, fashion week

23andMe geneticists want to knock off Fashion Week cheekbones

Jackson West — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:00:00 EDT

Google-backed startup 23andMe is working on fixing the Bay Area beauty gap by convincing the pretty people at New York's Fashion Week to submit genetic samples for the new, low cost of $399. As non-California residents, Manhattanites represent a genetic talent pool untouched by regulatory agencies in the startup's home state. 23andMe cofounders Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, pictured here, see fashionistas as runway dilettantes, and therefore brick-dumb.

But by figuring out the single-nucleotide polymorphisms which lead to chiseled features and a high-powered metabolism, Wojcicki might figure out how to make sure her next child with Google cofounder Sergey Brin is healthy, smart and ravishingly beautiful according to media norms. My suggestion? New York's models should be making 23andMe pay them for saliva samples. It's not like Wojcicki, whose startup is already backed by her husband's employer, can't dial for more dollars from Google's new venture investment arm whenever she feels like it.

You know little boy, I have much I can teach you

Jackson West — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:00:00 EDT

At the Diane von Fürstenberg show at New York's Fashion Week, Google cofounder Sergey Brin and his 23andMe cofounder wife Anne Wojcicki were spotted front and center. Which is hilarious, since Brin is rarely seen in anything but a t-shirt and jeans — hopefully he wore more stylish footwear than Crocs. Here he's spotted in the usual ensemble with Barry Diller, CEO of IAC, who had the sense to wear actual fashion. Friday's winner was hmann with "No, it's $40 for one song. You have to buy your own drinks, and there's no touching." (Photo by Getty/Michael Tran)

Fashion Week in Second Life

Chris Mohney — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:40:48 EST

If there's one thing New York's Fashion Week is known for, it's confronting attendees with stark, hard-hitting realities in sharp contrast to the escapist fantasy available elsewhere in our culture. Fortunately, anyone who feels that runway shows hit a little too close to home can experience another degree of separation in Second Life. Tonight at 6 p.m. Pacific/9 p.m. Eastern, you can attend a virtual fashion show for three Second Life "clothing designers," as well as the artisan who created the bot-forms wearing the clothes. (It's like if the real Fashion Week more overtly celebrated the work of fine plastic surgeons.) If you can't "get in" to the show in Second Life, you can still spectate from afar. Please, if anyone attends this thing and there's another flying penis attack, by all means send us the screenshots.