MediaBuyerPlanner: The Wall Street Journal is forming a new fashion and design bureau under current media and marketing deputy bureau chief Lisa Bannon, WWD reports. While coverage of fashion and design will increase, they won't become a separate section of the paper. Coverage will, however, be given its own name, and those topics will have articles in the Journal every day.

In a statement, Journal publisher L. Gordon Crovitz said that Journal readers are "the most affluent and most influential, style-setting women." He also said that Journal readers purchase "more women's fashion items than do all the readers of the women's magazines - combined."

The article points out, however, that the Journal claimed it would expand its fashion and style coverage when the Journal launched its Weekend section and when it launched the Saturday edition. But now, with the addition, in December, of New Yorker ad sales veteran Richard Skeen as head of the Journal's Consumer Group, and Vanity Fair and Town and Country vet Jamie Friedman onboard to tackle luxury and retail advertising, it looks as though the Journal may be ready to deliver on its promises.