Chocolate is one of the sweetest, most indulgent and delicious things in the world.

But get ready for a different chocolate experience because Australian “chocolatier” Max Brenner (who’s tag line is ‘chocolate by the bald man’) has launched a “decadent bodycare range almost good enough to eat!”

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good body butter, give me a Palmer’s Cocoa Butter when I need some moisturise, but this is a whole new take on body chocolate.

The Max Brenner BODY collection (which is not edible) utilized his “vast knowledge in the sourcing of pure origin cocoa and confectionery ingredients such as oriental spices, wild honey and almond oil to create a unique formula for the body and soul.”

“In my new Spa Collection, I have been able to surpass the borders of taste to create products that will embrace the benefits of raw ingredients, but even more importantly, that express my memorable experience for the whole Body,” says Max.

The BODY collection includes a 100% pure cocoa body butter, hand moisturizer and body scrub (pictured) - which is just the beginning. With the products retailing between AUD$26 - $32 (USD$21 - $26), it should be interesting to see if the hordes of people who file in and out of his chocolate cafe’s will leave with a Body product.

Would you buy your body care products from a brand known for their edible chocolate?

Guess what smells in the Meatpacking District? It’s not the smell from trash day, its Diane von Furstenberg’s signature fragrance D which retails at $75 for 100ml, and the locals get to enjoy it for free.

Page Six are reporting that the DvF boutique on West 14th Street boutique is pumping the fragrance through the shop’s vent and it’s making the surrounding streets quite fragrant too.

“I literally got dizzy from this,” one woman, on her way to check out the High Line Park, complained to Page Six, describing the scent as “putrid, awful . . . something you’d find on a 60-year-old matron.

“She [von Furstenberg] has some nerve wafting this out of her store. There is a point at which these peoples’ egos and chutzpah . . . absolutely begin to take over any sense of reality or consideration for other people . . . It’s just a matter of time before someone’s going to get sick and keel over from it or has an allergic reaction to it.”

Meanwhile, Page Six checked with DvF and her rep said they hadn’t heard about the problem but will look into it.

Scenting designer boutiques with the brand’s signature fragrance is no uncommon, with Coco Chanel’s staff reporting spraying Chanel No.5 through her atelier just before she arrived and eventually all Chanel boutiques.

News broke today that Sass & Bide, known for their sexy denim and Black Rats leggings, are dropping a special 10 year anniversary collection for Australian denim specialists, General Pants Co.

Named the Shine Collective (just like their exhibition during Australian Fashion Week) the collection will include t-shirts and denim-studded bleached-splattered denim. We love the light denim jeans and jean shorts with their studded back pockets, but we’re not sure about the lace-up black skinny jeans. I hope the designer thought about what you would do if you needed to go to the bathroom quickly.

The Sass & Bide Shine Collective for General Pants Co will be available from all General Pants stores with a online virtual show room for everyone who can’t get to a store to claim a piece for themselves.

Watch out, we’ve got more time to blog. But since we don’t like to re-post about things that are already around the blogsphere, here’s some of the stories floating around the web in the last 24 hours:

• Zandra Rhodes crashes her car into hardware shop window and injures a customer. [CatwalkQueen]
• J Brand has unveiled its fall 2009 ad campaign and it stars Freja Beja Erickson showing off her long pins in blue jeans. [FashionWeekDaily]
• Hilary Duff is heading back to television and joining the fashionable cast of Gossip Girl as a potential love interest for Dan and roommate of Vanessa. [EW]
• Nineties supermodel Karen Mulder has been arrested after reportedly making threatening phone calls to her plastic surgeon. Uh oh. [Vogue.co.uk]
• Nicole Kidman lands a Schweppes campaign - quite a long way from being the face of Chanel No. 5. [Just Jared]

Australian cosmetic brand, Bloom, is all atwitter with the news of Tom Cruise buying one of their lip gloss’.

The movie star has Melbourne newspapers eagerly following his every move as he joins wife, Katie Holmes in town while she films her latest movie, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, in Australia.

And Bloom were just as excited to announce through their @BloomCosmetics that Cruise purchased their Lip Gloss in ‘Amore’ from Myer, an Australian department store.

Twitter is just a crazy gossip machine isn’t it? I wonder who the lip loss was for, Katie or daughter Suri?

The latest Chanel Coco Mademoiselle ad staring Keira Knightley has been unveiled, following the same smoky moody style of the first.

The latest ad was a worldwide exclusive in the pages of August 2009 issue of Vogue Nippon and we love the smoky eye, chiseled cheekbones and the two strands of Chanel pearls dangling from her neck. Meanwhile Knightley’s modesty was saved thanks to the perfectly positioned black suspenders that cover her nipples which would have shown through the sheer white blouse. Suspenders and potential peek-a-boo nipples, reminiscent of Interview’s January 2008 cover, no?

According to Glamour, the young actress’ latest ads is her 10th publicity campaign for Chanel and discovered the fragrance she is now the face of through a friend, not when she became it’s face.

For a long time I preferred, and only wore, men’s cologne since I find it lighter. Strangely, before I was under contract with Coco Chanel, three years ago, a friend gave me a bottle of that perfume for Christmas. I started using it right away. Fate did things well. Normally a contract forces you to wear the fragrance in question. For me, that was already the case. The difference is that now I no longer have to buy my bottles of Coco Mademoiselle. They give them to me for free (laughs).

Check out the behind the scenes photos thanks to French Glamour below - it looks like some of the other options for the ads included Keira wearing nothing more than the black suspenders.

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“Vogue Australia has been saving people from looking ugly for 50 years”
- Damien Woolnough, editor of Vogue.com.au - Australia’s answer to Vogue.co.uk/Style.com.

Where was this gem of a quote said? At the Optus “hAPPlication” event just last week. You see, Optus, an Australian telecommunications company held a series of talks to show the consumer how the Apple iPhone is used by industry professionals in their every day lives. From work to home, in dating and for fashion lovers.

Woolnough was there to talk about how he used it in his Vogue life, and went on to talk about how he just had to have an iPhone because it was pretty and it was a great tool to show his websites features to potential advertisers (money does may the Vogue world go around). And apparently the whole front row at Australian Fashion Week had a iPhone in hand and was Twittering away, and that I must contest. There were a main group of girls and guys who were tweeting from their front row perches, myself included, and there was hardly and iPhone in sight.

Take this as a guide, we were the main tweeting crew at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week, and there is not an iPhone in sight. I count 3 Blackberries, 2 Nokia’s, 1 HTC Dream and a laptop. I’m just saying! And every time I saw him front row, Woolnough himself looked like he couldn’t be caught dead tweeting from the front row. The @VogueOz twitter didn’t fire much from the front row between April 24th and May 1st, instead it was used primarily to promote new content posted up on the Vogue website.

So how do you think Vogue Australia save people from looking ugly? Do they? Perhaps they force Australian women and men into Vogue Australia fashion school and force them to look at pages of their magazine until they’ve been brainwashed. Just like in the movies.

Marie Claire Australia were kind enough to do a write up about us in their August 2009 issue (featuring the gorgeous Cameron Diaz on the cover) but there are a few little things I’d like to clear up (as I wait to hear if there is anything they can do on their side).

I was quoted as saying:

“When I started my blog in 2002, I had about 10 readers a week. Today I have 2,000.”

Ahem, I told the journalist who wrote the piece, I average about 2,000 visitors a day, not a week. It may be a small oversight on their end, but to be featured in a piece about ‘How to Make Money Online’ and underplay my statistics in a national magazine is not small to me.

Statistics are what all bloggers are able to leverage advertising off, and for a magazine as widely read as Marie Claire Australia to get my statistics wrong could be potentially detrimental for me financially as I don’t have the buffer of a “day job” any longer. I love blogging and jostling for an interesting story or three to write about every day, but when things happen that are out of your control it is extremely frustrating.

I would also like to note, though the directly quoted talking about SASSYBELLA.com’s ad rates, I never talked about my rates to the journalist, instead pointed her to our rate card. And I no longer use Google AdSense ads and are not thinking about going back to using them.

So what did I tell the journalist exactly? See my answers to her questions below. Looking back, it’s a shame each featured online business woman didn’t get a bigger write up. So many women are starting their own online businesses today.

[Update] Marie Claire have kindly updated my numbers and posted a copy of the article up on their website. View it here, with the correct numbers. And my incorrect Google Adsense recommendation.

In the meantime, did I mention we’ve also been lucky enough to be nominated in the Blogger category of Cosmopolitan Australia’s Fun Fearless Female awards 2009? Please take two seconds to put in a vote for us, voting ends very soon!

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I’m going to call it – this is the craziest rumour of the week.

Geri Halliwell is reportedly set to design a clothing line for Topshop.

All this started because the former Spice Girl was spotted at the Arcadia headquarters last week and apparently discussed ideas for her collection, which will be for the slightly older customer (as not to encroach on Kate Moss’ territory of course).

If it’s true, I wonder if Geri would model her own collection and will there be a Union Jack dress… you know the one.

Would you be interested in a Geri Halliwell clothing line?