Rihanna, who is fronting Nivea’s 100th anniversary campaign, is also collaborating with Armani, both as a face of the fashion giant’s new promotion (launched earlier this fall) and as a designer of a new capsule collection of apparel, which includes lace lingerie in a special bag, two styles of jeans, a leather biker jacket, two tees and a leather bag, featuring the signer’s ‘R’ logo and the eagle, the symbol of the fashion brand.

On the heels of the launch of Levi’s campaign ‘Go Forth’ on a global scale earlier this year, which encouraged thousands of young people to take action and be one the forefront, the iconic jeanswear brand is kicking off a film competition entitled ‘Show us the way’. To launch this new cinema contest, which encourages participants to show “their visualization of a better tomorrow,” Levi’s has collaborated with the American Film Institute to provide the US community of filmmakers—both amateur and professional—with an opportunity to take a first step to what they really want.

From lip-locks to… poo. Benetton, the apparel brand which has recently launched its new campaign featuring kissing political leaders, now is exploring another facet of life, which is much less enjoyable. November is the month when World Toilet Day is celebrated (it’s marked on November 19), and the brand has dedicated the new edition of its COLORS magazine to this theme, which is usually not openly discussed. The Shit. A survival guide puts the everyday sanitation issues into the spotlight and invites readers to start exploring the ‘excrement’ problem. The more we are ignoring it, the more pressing it gets, so Benetton invites all of us to get informed about the fecal matter and start the conversation on a global scale.

Benetton, the international apparel brand, which is spreading the idea of love and unity across the globe with its hilarious promotional projects along with selling brightly colored sweaters and dresses, is now rolling out a new international campaign entitled UNHATE and launches a foundation of the same name to cultivate the principle of love and tolerance despite all religious, cultural, governmental, national and individual differences. The new multiplatform campaign developed by Fabrica Italy and 72andSunny includes a series of posters featuring modern political leaders from different ‘camps’ kissing each other (remember the legendary Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker’s smooch?) and an impressive 60-second spot by French director Laurent Chanez, which showcases the moments of love, kissing and embraces closely entwined with aggressiveness, fights and blood.

Burton Snowboards and PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew have partnered to work on improving sustainability in apparel and outerwear. The brands will be collaborating during the 2012 and 2013 product seasons to change the way outerwear and apparel are made and searching the ways of creating sustainable fabrics out of recycled plastic bottles. The created material will feature the new Burton gear collections.