The Washington Post has a fun little story on the ever-growing number of music and movie celebrities who are committed to extending their personal brands beyond the entertainment industry and into the realms of fashion and fragrance. Can you name the celebrities behind the following fashion brands (clues in parentheses)?

• L.A.M.B. (named after her best-selling CD, Love. Angel. Music. Baby.)
• Sweetface
• Princy (named after her father’s nickname for her)
• House of Dereon (named after her late grandmother, Agnez Dereon)
• Twenty8Twelve (named after her birth date, 12/28)

The answers are:

• L.A.M.B. — Gwen Stefani
• Sweetface — Jennifer Lopez
• Princy — Jessica Simpson
• House of Dereon — Beyoncé
• Twenty8Twelve — Sienna Miller

It may not be much of a jump from celebrity to fashion icon, but the usual caveats of brand extension apply:

You’ll want to give your new fashion brand its own identity, breathing life into it rather than naming it after yourself. Your fans normally want to live your lifestyle, not be you, and this brand strategy enables your line to flourish independently, more or less unaffected by the ups and downs of your entertainment career.

That said, your designs should reflect your own sense of style. In other words, you should actually want to wear your own brand — not all the time, but often enough that we know it’s “you.”  Otherwise, you risk being a fashion fad, not a brand.

My prediction for the next big celeb-turned-fashion-brand? Fergie.

Korea’s largest newspaper, The Chosun Ilbo (in English), has a beautifully-illustrated story on the use of eye-catching architecture as brand symbols.  Their examples include the Galleria department store, the Ferrari showroom, and Hyundai headquarters in Seoul and the Mikimoto and Prada stores in Tokyo.

What’s your pick for Best Picture of the Year?  If you know I call the Beach Cities home, you can guess mine.

If you thought your last naming project was a challenge, be very thankful you’re not the government official in charge of naming Indonesia’s 10,000 or so as-yet-unnamed islands! According to an article in The Jakarta Post, the United Nations is insisting that Indonesia give every one of its often-uninhabited islands an official name by 2007.

Naming an island is serious stuff, as the lack of a name makes it difficult for the government to enforce its territorial claims. Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi acknowledged that the job is the responsibility of the central government, but he is wisely encouraging the local authorities to take the initiative.

We’ll gladly volunteer our services in exchange for a little uninhabited island in the sun to call our own. (Reposted)