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If 2013 wasn't going to be a big enough year for Zac Posen, it just got bigger.

Posen announced on Tuesday he is "so excited to be the new judge on @ProjectRunway Season 11!" He later tweeted, "It's going to be quite the season."

Posen will replace Michael Kors, who will sit out this season due to scheduling conflicts. But Kors isn't leaving the show altogether: he'll rejoin the judges' panel as a guest during the season finale. Heidi Klum, the show's executive producer, tweeted "I will miss you this season my brother @MichaelKors I love you!" before welcoming Posen to the team.

Posen, who has been a guest judge on the show in the past, called the job "an amazing opportunity. I hope I'm here to give a new perspective to the designers."

The new season of Project Runway debuts on Jan. 24, but it won't be the only place Posen will appear on TV next year. His Spring 2013 runway show was filmed for an episode of the new modeling reality series The Face.

Source: Instagram User Zac_Posen

Coco Rocha isn't holding her tongue about a perceived "Photoshop fail" in her current Longchamp campaign with Emily DiDonato.

One of the ads, shot by Max Vadukul, shows DiDonato sitting on the back of a bicycle while Rocha steers. Since viewers can't see DiDonato's legs, and because Photoshop disasters have become so commonplace as of late, The Huffington Post was quick to question whether DiDonato's lower extremities had gotten the chop. Rocha responded:

"As you can see in the behind-the-scenes pictures above (which were posted everywhere a few months back) she's just balancing with her feet on the seat behind me. Skillful, I know, but no Photoshop disaster this time. . . I believe you stand corrected!"

Indeed, Rocha has never been afraid to speak her mind about the use of Photoshop in advertising and editorial work. In July, she tweeted, "Hey, Photoshop guys! Can you please be sure to count two arms and two legs on the girls you cut and paste? Thanks!! Sincerely, Models." Just before that, when her May cover of Elle Brazil was retouched to make it appear that she wasn't wearing a bra, Rocha dedicated a whole blog post to making it clear that she was.

Photos via Oh So Coco.

Grace Coddington isn't keeping quiet about what she thinks of Alexander Wang replacing her friend Nicolas Ghesquière as creative director of Balenciaga.

Coddington, who said last month that she hoped Ghesquière wouldn't "just give up and walk away" from fashion, has added her voice to the chorus of people commenting on Wang's new job. She told The Huffington Post that she's optimistic about the future of the house. She also shared her thoughts on Ghesquière's possible future plans, and on whether John Galliano will ever make a comeback.

On Wang designing for Balenciaga: "I'm sure Alexander Wang will do really well. He's very well-liked. It's an incredibly difficult thing to take over for Nicolas because there are all the old fuddy-duddy people like me digging their heels in. But you've got to embrace it — it's happened. I'm sure the Gucci people thought long and carefully, they didn't just pull him out of a hat. And he fit all their criteria."

On whether Wang can really replace Ghesquière: "Don't think of it as the same house as it was when Nicolas was the creative director; that's everybody's mistake. Don't think of it as a replacement for Nicolas, because it isn't. Alexander has a whole different agenda. He's a very confident young man, he's cute-looking, girls love him, he's an 'It' person and he makes very affordable clothes. I haven't spoken to him, but he can only do what he can do. He can't be somebody else, and he certainly can't be Nicolas."

On Nicolas Ghesquière's next steps: "He will bide his time and come back. He's too brilliant to just disappear. He's very passionate about what he does. He's not caught up in fashion and celebrity at all. I don't think he's going to go off and become a sculptor like Helmut Lang, either."

On whether Galliano can come back to the industry: "I hope he will return, but I don't know. That's a tough one to get over. That's tougher than the Gucci people thinking they want a change of face. I love John; I think he's brilliant. He certainly intends to come back — when he's ready."

Cathy Horyn and Oscar de la Renta must have resolved the name-calling scuffle they had in September: the fashion critic was spotted front row at the designer's Pre-Fall 2013 show Monday night.

WWD reports that Horyn not only showed up at the show, but made a point of telling the brand's president, Alex Bolen, she was wearing one of the designer's dresses. We saw Bolen talking with Horyn before the show began; the two later walked toward backstage, where Horyn talked with the designer before the show.

"I told her we probably approach fashion in two different ways," de la Renta said. "I respect her way and I hope she respects my way. My vision of fashion is for my customers. I read every single article she writes on fashion. I never hold grudges."

In her review of de la Renta's Spring 2013 collection, Horyn called the designer a "hot dog." De la Renta responded with a full-page ad in WWD, asking "If you have the right to call me a hot dog why do I not have the right to call you a stale 3-day old hamburger?" Horyn later told us that she "used the term in a professional context, as someone showing off his tricks, like a surfer."

Tongues are still wagging about Alexander Wang's appointment as the creative director at Balenciaga: Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, and some other powerful industry players have now chimed in on his new job.

Eric Wilson talked with Wintour, von Furstenberg, and a number of other people who have observed Wang's work since his career started. Like Karl Lagerfeld and much of the Twittersphere, many of the people Wilson interviewed wholeheartedly support Wang's move. Below, the rest of the industry reacts to Wang's big news.

Anna Wintour on whether Wang's age is a problem: "Oh, please, come on. How great is it to be young? That is when designers are at their most fearless. That is when you do your most creative work."

Wintour, again, on Wang winning the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund: "He was so articulate. He said he wants to dress the girls of his age and his generation. That's what you see in everything he does. He lives and breathes the Alex brand."

PPR chief Francois-Henri Pinault, who is similarly unconcerned about Wang's age: When he started at Balenciaga, Ghesquière "was designing uniforms for Air France, and who would have said that Nicolas would become such a great talent?"

Isabelle Guichot, CEO of Balenciaga: "We're not asking him to be an entrepreneur. But luxury fashion is a business with some rules, and he understood that very early in his career, without ever compromising the creativity."

Robert Burke, industry consultant: "There were some feelings after what happened with John Galliano at Dior that the brands were promoting the individual designers too much. Now they're thinking, what is it going to take to keep a brand relevant and alive?"

Diane von Furstenberg on whether Wang is ready for the new job: "It was a coup for Alex, and a coup for American fashion," she said, adding, "he's going to need some mentoring in Paris."

And one designer who chose to remain unnamed, on Wang and other designers like him: "They're not fashion designers. They're fashion curators. They're sitting at a computer copying other peoples' ideas."

Photo: Wintour and Wang in 2010.

Say it ain't so: Robin Givhan has been let go from her position as the special correspondent for style and culture at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. She'll leave the company at the end of the year.

Daily Intel reports that Givhan is among the employees of The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company laid off on the second day of its ongoing staff reductions. The layoffs come after Newsweek announced that it would stop printing and merge with the Beast's online platform.

"I plan to work on my book about the 1973 Versailles fashion show and look for a new job," Givhan said.

She joined Newsweek at the end of 2010 and had previously been the fashion editor of The Washington Post. In 2006, Givhan became the first and only fashion journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize "for her witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism."

Photo via Givhan's Facebook page.

Raf Simons says he's working on turning Dior into a brand that everyone in the world will recognize as soon as they see it — sort of like Chanel.

"The Chanel woman? I don't even need to see, I smell her from round the corner, but I don't recognize the Dior woman," Simons said in an interview for the January issue of Vogue UK. "I want to work on that fast. Chanel has the deux-pièces with the pockets, or the bouclé, but what is it for Dior nowadays? I can't say."

Eventually, Simons wants Dior to be something that appeals to a wide variety of people.

"Dior's ultimate obsession is that he wanted [the public] to wear it. I want them to wear it on the street," he said. "If it doesn't relate to the outside, then it would be very theatrical for me."

That mission — to make serious and wearable clothing for Dior — has guided Simons's short tenure at the French fashion house, and even extends to his couture collections.

"I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture, or for a single moment on the red carpet," he said in an interview with Vogue Australia last month. "I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and a relevance there, because that's what Mr. Christian Dior wanted. In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theater."

Photo: Simons photographed by David Sims for the December issue of Vogue.

Do magazine editors really have that much disdain for people who got famous online? Tommy Ton thinks they do.

"You can sense it when you're going to the shows," Ton said in an interview with The Talks. "You feel like they belittle you in a way. Not intentionally, but you can feel like they're thinking, 'Oh, you've cheated the system. I don't feel like you earned your spot here sitting in the show.' Maybe that's just me being a bit more insecure. And if I still feel that way in my position I can only imagine what a new blogger feels like coming into this."

Ton added that even famous denizens of the Internet take flak for not having risen through the ranks at traditional publications.

"There are negative connotations to being a blogger," he said. "Regardless of whatever success you've had, when you meet someone they are like, 'Oh, you're that blogger!' And I'm like, 'Yes, that's me, the blogger.' It's a very belittling or demeaning term in some ways. But I think it's also great that there are people like [BryanBoy] who are very comfortable and secure with themselves. He's like, 'Yes, I'm the blogger. And I'm also on America's Next Top Model. What are you going to say about that?'"

Francois-Henri Pinault — CEO of the company that owns Balenciaga — says his newest employee Alexander Wang is exactly what the fashion house needed in a new creative director.

In a Q-and-A with CBS reporter Rebecca Jarvis, Pinault said a combination of Wang's youth, worldview, and talent for design made him the perfect candidate to replace Nicolas Ghesquière.

"Alexander Wang is young and he has a very universal culture," Pinault said. "He has a very strong talent not only when it comes to accessible product, but his talent could also be adapted for couture at Balenciaga. It will be a big challenge for him. I like that he's young and based in New York, so we will have more exposure of the brand worldwide. Alexander has this wonderful contemporary brand under his own name and this has nothing to do with Balenciaga. We will not change anything in the positioning. We have spent a lot of time determining where the brand is and where we want to stay in terms of being very modern and avant-garde, but still being influenced by the street. Nicolas was one of the best at this."

Wang will no doubt have big shoes to fill, but Pinault said his Asian heritage "was not a criteria for recruitment at all. It was really [a matter of] let's find the right talent, the right skills, the right profile for the reality of the brand. . . We plan to continue to build on what has been built by Nicolas. We needed someone who was capable of coping with that."

Rumors about Anna Wintour being in the running for an ambassadorship are so strong that they've made it all the way back to Washington.

ABC reporter Jake Tapper brought up the rumor — although indirectly — at yesterday's White House press briefing, asking press secretary Jay Carney what the president looks for in an ambassador.

Carney said he was "not going to engage in speculation about possible personnel announcements," adding that the president "looks for talent, wisdom, and character in all of his appointees, and he would do that regardless of the position."

After a few follow-up questions, Tapper jokingly asked whether the president had ever seen The Devil Wears Prada.

Serious speculation that Wintour might be appointed ambassador to the UK or France arose last week when Bloomberg reported Wintour's campaign fundraising efforts for President Obama made her a top contender for the positions.

While rumors have circulated for years that Wintour would leave Vogue for a post in the diplomatic corps, "two people familiar with the matter" said Obama has considered nominating Wintour for one of the two positions. Wintour was one of Obama's top campaign bundlers in 2012, raising over $500,000 for his reelection effort through dinners and other events. The Runway to Win line of campaign merchandise — which Wintour spearheaded — raised another $40 million.

Wintour is said to be in competition with two other top bundlers, businessmen Matthew Barzun and Marc Lasry. If Obama does nominate Wintour and she makes it through Senate confirmation for either position, she'd replace Ambassador Louis Susman in London or Ambassador Charles Rivkin in Paris. Obama nominated both men for their positions after he was elected president in 2008, and neither is expected to take on a second term.

But would Wintour really leave fashion for politics? A Vogue spokeswoman told Bloomberg that Wintour is "happy with her current job," and friends of Wintour's have said in the past that she "has absolutely no interest in an ambassadorship."