• The 2009 CFDA Award nominees were announced this evening. [WWD]
• Following months of speculation, it's official: Olivier Theyskens (left) has parted ways with the house of Nina Ricci. [WWD]
• Depressed? "In times of trouble, pink is the shopper's comfort color." [NYT]
• Katie Holmes is starting up a kids clothing line, it seems. [Racked]
• Is Marc Jacobs getting married later this year? Possibly! [FWD]
• The times they are a-changin': Beyoncé appears on the new cover of Vogue, which means the mag has featured black women two issues in a row. [NYM]
• Karen Elson stars in Agent Provocateur's new spring campaign. [Pipeline]
• LiLo's spray-on tanner actually works, you may be surprised to hear. [NYDN]
• A look inside the new Armani flagship on Fifth Ave. [Racked]
• Claudia Schiffer has such a huge clothing collection, she converted a climate-controlled helicopter hanger into a giant closet. Naturally. [Daily Mail]

• Sneakers at Bouley? Not acceptable. You can wear them to Per Se, though, provided you also bring along a doctor's note. [TONY]
• A list of 75 outdoor cafés that have opened, in case you're feelin' brave. [GS]
• The Times would like to remind you that people are still spending big bucks to hit up brunch at Bagatelle and Merkato 55, recession or not. [NYT]
• Braeburn gets a middling, one-star review of in this week's New York. [NYM]
• A fire did serious damage to Coney Island's famed Totonno's pizzeria over the weekend, but the owners say they plan to reopen in six weeks or so. [NY1]
• Speaking of pizza, the highly-anticipated Kesté opens next week. [GS]
• Looking to open a restaurant? Cool! Here are some availabilities. [Eater]
• More trouble for Gordon Ramsay: A week after selling his LA eatery, he's been forced to sell off flagship in Paris because of the credit crunch. [NYP]
• Eric Ripert will tack one more honor to his resume tonight when he's awarded the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest award, at the French Consulate. [TFB]

Citigroup reported today that the bank's embattled CEO, Vikram Pandit, earned a total of $38.2 million in compensation in 2008. Outrageous? Not so much. The bulk of his pay package was in stock, which means if you adjust for Citi's under-$2 stock price, it comes out to about $2.9 million. The good news for Vik: He already took Citi to the cleaners in 2007 when he sold his underperforming hedge fund to the bank for $800 million, so he shouldn't have any difficulty paying off the balance on his Citibank Mastercard this month. [WSJ, NYT]

In this economy, who wouldn't benefit from a little "crystal energy" while preparing their taxes? [EVGrieve]

It was only a matter of time before attention-hungry restaurateur Nino Selimaj figured a way to cash in on the Bernie Madoff saga. New York's most successful Albanian-born Italian restaurant owner says that he'll be giving away free meals at Nino's 208 on East 58th Street to anyone who was ripped off by Bernie all this week, so long as they mention the schemer when making reservations and bring a monthly statement from Madoff's investment firm to the restaurant. One quick way to make the deal work even if you weren't victimized by Bernie: Buy an authentic Madoff statement on Ebay for $21 and then order the $25 osso buco. [City Room]

We have no idea why the Hooters on 56th and Broadway would be thriving amid the recession. But we're pretty sure it has nothing to do with Hooters being a "family-friendly" restaurant that appeals to "parents with their four and five-year olds," as the restaurant's extraordinarily creepy manager tells a reporter from Fox News. You will, however, be pleased to hear that according to a Hooters waitress, comforting men who have been laid off due to the downturn is "her duty." The video is below!

Andrew Cuomo is demanding answers. President Obama said today that he "choked up with anger" when he heard the news. The news media is up in arms. And now the Treasury Department says it plans to do whatever it can to block as much as $30 billion in government aid if AIG doesn't revert course and cancel the $165 million in bonus payments that it says it is compelled to hand out to company execs. Why in the world is AIG going ahead with the plan when doing so pretty much guarantees its reputation will end up ranking up there with Enron and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities?

It looks like being Gwyneth Paltrow's bikini waxer has its benefits. Beautician Janea Padilha, who counts Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Uma Thurman and Lindsay Lohan as clients of her J Sisters salon on 57th Street, has signed a five-figure book deal with Perigree, an imprint of Penguin Books. Brazilian Sexy will give readers advice on "love, life, and being sexy," and Padilha says she'll "talk about what happens in the room where I work." Everything you wanted to know about Gwynnie's pubic hair situation: coming to a bookstore near you in 2010! [NYO]

We understand you're super busy and all, but it's March 16th, Mayor Bloomberg. Christmas was nearly three months ago! Would it be too much to ask that you retire the mini-Christmas trees, pine cones, and red branches outside your East 79th Street townhouse and replace them with something more seasonal? Spring will arrive in just 96 hours! Below, a few more photos of the mayor's rather dated display along with further evidence that he really did gobble up four of the six apartments in the townhouse next door: His tired decorations are in front of that building, too.

You didn't expect Andrew Cuomo to remain on the sidelines after AIG dropped the bomb this weekend that it plans to go ahead with $165 million in bonus payments, did you? Of course not. Cuomo sent a letter to AIG CEO Ed Liddy earlier today demanding more info on the compensation plan. He set a 4pm deadline and said if he doesn't receive the info by then, he'll issue subpoenas and "potentially seek court enforcement." The letter he sent the company is below.

The latest profession to experience a boom due to the recession: drug counselors! The Center for Motivation and Change in Midtown has expanded its staff of psychologists to deal with a surge in patients, while at the Realization Center, a rehab outpatient clinic near Union Square, evening group meetings "could be mistaken for Wall Street board meetings," since they're full of laid-off professionals who fear the stress of unemployment will send them back to an old drug or alcohol habit, and bankers who can no longer finance their coke addictions. So if you're a struggling dealer wondering where all your rich customers are hanging out these days, well, now you know.

• Yet one more newspaper is folding. Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer will shut down its print operations tomorrow, but its website will live on. [Seattle PI]
• The Sci Fi Channel is changing its name. To Syfy. This is not a joke. [NYT]
• CNN says it plans to "devote the bulk of its news effort this week" to covering the global financial meltdown. How timely! [NYT]
• Are CNN anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts secretly dating? [NYM]
• Book sales in the U.S. are down slightly, but they're up in Europe. [NYT]
• Andy Samberg will host the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. [THR]
• Barack Obama will appear on The Tonight Show on Thursday. [The Caucus]
• More on last week's management shakeup at Fox. [Variety]
• Sopranos creator David Chase is back at HBO with a new mini-series. [AB]
• Race to Witch Mountain was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. [AP]

How on earth did so many investors fall victim to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme? If they'd only bothered to consult a "face reading expert," they would have known instantly he was up to no good! At least that's what Jean Haner, who was asked by the Daily News to read the fraudster's mug, says. The author of the book The Wisdom of Your Face, Haner says that while Bernie's face might suggest "I care about you—and your money," that's just what he used to gain the trust of his victims. If you look more closely, you'll see that his eyes are "deep-set" and "slant down," which are clearly indicative of someone who is pessimistic and prone to do dishonest things: "When the going gets tough, rather than be honest, he'll keep secrets." Now you tell us!

If you're the kind of person whose sartorial style exudes even a molecule of panache or individuality, you might want to consider giving yourself a serious makeover before a job interview, assuming you can land one these days. Experts (well, image consultants desperately trying to adapt their superfluous services to the new economy) are warning that "casual or quirky" clothes might imply that, God forbid, you're a free-thinking risk-taker—which in this job market ranks somewhere below Satanist child-molester on the appealing employee scale.

Barry Diller riding his bike around town yesterday ... Rachel Weisz walking in the East Village ... Mario Batali hanging out with son Benno in the Village ... Dustin Hoffman and his daughter shopping in Soho ...Tobey Maguire pushing daughter Ruby in a stroller down Fifth Avenue ... Brad Pitt taking Pax and Maddox to lunch at Mars 2112 in Times Square ... Russell Brand shopping in SoHo ... Joshua Jackson and Diane Kruger walking downtown ... Hugh Jackman tossing around a ball in the Village ... Robert Redford and Sibylle Szaggars shopping on Madison Avenue ... Angelina Jolie shooting scenes for Salt outside St. Barth's Church on Park ... Fergie leaving a building in Midtown ... Taylor Momsen standing on the set of Gossip Girl ... Alec Baldwin leaving the Waverly Inn ... and Rihanna, Jay-Z, Beyonce and Brandy going to dinner at the Spotted Pig.

Olivia Palermo turned up on WPIX last week as part of her ongoing campaign to restore her good name. And what do you know? She says she doesn't always dress up (we thought so!) and can occasionally be seen in "Converse and spandex," she decided to appear on the The City because she thought it would "be a good learning experience," and despite evidence she does not actually work at Diane von Furstenberg, she says she exclusively wears DVF to go to work every day. Oh, and if you show her pictures of celebs on the red carpet, she will totally be able to tell you what designer each woman is wearing. The video below.

Remember that friend you had in college who was a total troublemaker and really crazy stuff would invariably go down whenever you hung out with him? And then the day came when you suddenly decided it was time to grow up and, like, be an adult and everything, and you decided to stop hanging out with him? That day may have arrived for Bill Clinton and sleazy billionaire Ron Burkle: The Journal reports that the former president has decided to sever his ties as an "adviser" to Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. [WSJ]

Remember those halcyon days when our fashion icons were strictly seen and not heard? Now the previously inscrutable Kate Moss happily talks on camera, Anna Wintour is starring in not one but two documentaries, and this Wednesday sees the debut of Carine Roitfeld's CNN Revealed special. Naturally, CNN is tantalizing us with plenty of snippets ahead of time, mostly focused on that earth-shattering issue: Does Carine really intend to steal Anna's job?

• It's good news/bad news for Alex Rodriguez: The injured Yankees slugger has finally unloaded his Trump Park Avenue apartment for $9.9 million, nearly six months after first putting it on the market for $14 million. But he's been forced to cut the price of his Coral Gables mansion once again. Origiinally listed for $14.9 million last fall, A-Rod dropped the price down to $12.3 million in January. It's now available for $11 million. [P6, CB]
• Retired Avon CFO Robert Corti and his wife Joann have paid $2.075 million for a 28th-floor apartment at 300 East 54th Street. [Cityfile]
• Investment exec Duke Buchan III has gone into contract to sell his four-bedroom co-op at 840 Park, which he purchased for $9.55 million two years ago and put up for sale for $13.95 million last October. It had most recently been listed at $12.95 million. [NYT]

Hacking streets signs is all the rage, apparently. And it's surprisingly easy to do, too. Enjoy. [Gothamist]