Fashion news: ALT to host Manolo sale, SJP does her Halston homework, and L’Oréal buys Essie

Burberry is launching a 30-piece April Showers collection this month to keep customers shopping until the first fall 2010 deliveries hit stores in June, and providing items that are apropos to April: trench coats, rain boots and umbrellas. [Coutorture]

If Fashion’s Night Out had a slogan, it would be bigger is better, because that’s where the organizers’ heads are at. The event will supposedly be the biggest fashion show ever put on in New York, with 200 models walking, with 1,500 seats for oglers. [Fashionista]

Nail polish specialist Essie has been bought by L’Oréal USA, who has plans to expand the brand into cosmetics and eventually bring it to the mass market. [WWD]

Sarah Jessica Parker is reading up for her role as creative director of the Halston Heritage label, spotted in NY carrying Simply Halston, the 1991 biography of the late designer. SJP is doing her homework? We find it a little heartwarming. [NYP]

After seeing Michelle Obama wearing J. Crew, Oprah took note and bought some stock, saying, “Full disclosure here: I went and bought some J. Crew stock, and that was a very good decision.” Smart cookie, that Oprah. [Jezebel]

Details magazine has named Toronto as a mecca of “modern-art galleries, high-concept restaurants and fashion-forward boutiques,” zooming in on Queen St. West and well…that’s about as far as the writer went. [Toronto Life]

125,000 tonnes of knockoff items, bearing labels such as Diesel, Ed Hardy and Ralph Lauren and worth over $10 million, are being donated to earthquake victims in Haiti. [Gothamist via The Cut]

Miss Sixty is shutting down 10 of their 20 shops in the U.S. The brand has had a lot of financial discord in the past few years, and in September the company outsourced management its Miss Sixty and Energie stores in the U.S. to Canadian retailer Aldo Group. [WWD]

Manolo Blahnik‘s sample sale in N.Y. next week just got itself a host–a host for a sample sale?–and it’s none other than André Leon Talley. If the idea of getting Manolos at half off wasn’t going to have enough of a rambunctious crowd, adding in ALT is pretty much asking for a shoe riot. [Racked]

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