Not that long ago I was sitting around Azzedine Alaia’s kitchen in Paris at a dinner he had for Stephanie Seymour and her husband Peter Brant (I know – that’s a lot of names to drop in a first sentence, but that’s sort of what happens at Alaia’s; all these famous people sit around eating mashed potatoes and you get ideas).

In any case, Brant was talking about the fact that his business, which for the large part involves making paper for newspapers (not this one), is experiencing interesting times. Most of the newsprint paper he makes starts off as wood shavings discarded during building. The issue, he said, is that because of the housing crisis, real estate development has slowed, and pulp is getting rarer, and thus more expensive; costs that at some point will be passed on to the newspaper consumer.