Fan Fare

Gran, Mom or Aunt? Who should get Jacko’s kids?

The thorny question of who should raise Michael Jackson’s three young children goes back to the Los Angeles courts next week — and there could be three women now vying for custody.

Jacko said in his will that he wanted his Mom Katherine (pictured right) to look after them (with his good Motown friend, singer Diana Ross, as second choice).

But ex-wife Debbie Rowe (pictured left) appears to be considering staking a claim to at least the two kids ( Prince Michael I and Paris) that she gave birth to, if not also young Blanket, whose parentage has never been clarified.

Rowe this week slapped a defamation lawsuit on a woman who claimed she was willing to accept millions of dollars to give up her custody rights.

Now there’s news of a possible third contender — Jackson’s younger sister Janet (pictured right) , who has no children of her own and who according to OK! magazine has formed a special bond with the kids and is willing to raise them.

(It was Janet, remember, who comforted young Paris after she made her heart-felt tribute to “the best father you could ever imagine” at the singer’s public memorial last week.)

So we have a loving but 79 year-old grandmother, a mom who has barely had any contact with her children for 10 years, and a superstar aunt (aged 43) who may be best-known for her “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 halftime Super Bowl show.

The King of Pop’s last testament

Details of Michael Jackson’s will began to emerge on Wednesday with all of his multimillion-dollar estate being placed in a family trust, even as plans for his highly anticipated funeral remained sketchy.

The will, signed in 2002, estimates his estate at that time to be worth in excess of $500 million and was filed with a Los Angeles Court. In it, Jackson leaves his entire estate to the Michael Jackson Family Trust, which ultimately benefits his three children, mother and unnamed charities.

Jackson’s 79-year-old mother, Katherine Jackson, is nominated to be guardian of Jackson’s children Prince Michael I, 12, Paris Michael Katherine, 11 and Prince Michael II, 7, and if she should be unwilling and unable to be guardian, Jackson nominated his friend, pop star Diana Ross, to be the children’s guardian.

Read the full document here:

DvF’s knits and hats hit right note with Diana Ross

Diana Ross, the Motown star who favors sequins and silk for her concert wardrobe, gave her friend, designer Diane von Furstenberg, a rave on Sunday for her fall 2009 collection of cozy knits and funky hats shown during New York Fashion Week.

“I loved the knits, and I absolutely loved the hats,” Ross said in a backstage interview after the runway show on Sunday afternoon in the Tent at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan.

Knit cocoon coats, flowing sweater jackets and knit dresses over “sweater pants” were topped off by traffic-stopping hats, distinguished by huge piles of pompoms in outre color combinations of brights and dark neutrals (red, pink, orange and black, for instance.) The clothes looked like they would travel well and give women some versatile options for cold weather.

The fall 2009 look marked a distinct departure from last year’s fall/winter collection, when the designer’s inspiration was “film noir” glamor evoked by 1940s menswear blazers and slip dresses.

Velvet popped up on the DvF runway in surprising places, lending comfortable elegance to her iconic wrap dress, which became a best seller in the 1970s and established Diane von Furstenberg as a major name in American fashion design.

“I loved the velvet, too,” said Ross, who shot to fame with the Supremes in the 1960s when Motown hits became part of the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. After that, she launched a solo act that still sells out major concert venues.  Ross, with her curly black hair flowing long and wide around her, was swarmed by photographers before the show began when she took her seat on the front row.

After the models paraded single file to signal the end of the show, von Furstenberg walked the runway on the arm of creative director Nathan Jenden. Then she broke into a little dance as music director Michel Gaubert pumped the house full of the voice of Diana Ross singing one of her greatest solo hits, “Upside Down” from 1980:  “Upside down, boy, you send me, inside out, ’round and ’round …”