On Thursday, September 4, NBC Universal threw a party on the rooftop of Gramercy Park Hotel in honor of Rachel Zoe's new show on Bravo, The Rachel Zoe Project, and invited her dearest fashionable friends for the occasion.

One of the first guests to arrive was designer Gilles Mendel of J. Mendel, who this year has opted for a still life presentation instead of a runway show. 

"For many, many years people have told me that would be great for them to look at my clothes closely," said Mr. Mendel. "It's about showing clothes in a museum so that you can look closer and longer. For the kind of clothes I make there is a need for more interaction."  read more »

Victoria Beckham is launching a collection of dresses featuring “comfortable and supportive” corsets and belts. [WWD] 

Italian designer Mila Schon has died at the age of 91. [Reuters]

Dominican model Arlenis Sosa, who is 19, will be the new face of Lancome. [WWD]  

The Observer’s own Simon Doonan thinks that Sarah Palin is more “LensCrafters Lady” than “Ms. Congeniality.” [The Cut]

 read more »

At this morning's Yigal Azrouel show in West Chelsea, attendees received gift bags stuffed with T-shirts, nail polish, and—this was new!—prophylactics. Sheathed in feminine floral packaging, the condoms (pictured above) were designed by Mr. Azrouel himself for condom manufacturer Proper Attire ("PROPER ATTIRE Required for entry," read the boxes). The color palette roughly complemented Mr. Azrouel's earth-toned runway looks.

Attendees such as Lancome model Elettra Wiedemann, socialites Fabiola Beracasa and Zani Gugelmann, Vogue's Andre Leon Talley, Katie Lee Joel, interior designer Nate Berkus, and Internet-famous teenager Cory Kennedy are now in possession of the high-end condoms, which will be sold in Mr. Azrouel's New York store.

(Disappointingly, the objects themselves were not floral, but greasy and nude-colored like more mass-market Trojans).

"Eat the cake! Do it for real now!" the photographers were shouting at Abigail Lorick's spring/summer '09 presentation on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 4, at a penthouse in the garment district.

They were screaming at the models, who in a counter-Fashion Week moment were asked to eat large, tiered cakes covered with pink and blue frosting as they stood around in confection-colored party frocks (also tiered) and '50s-style hairdos.

The "Cake Coma" room was just one of seven live-action sets built for Ms. Lorick's presentation, titled "A Room of One's Own." The other rooms included a bedroom scene with models in silk garments poised atop an oversize bed, a garden scene, and a library set that we're sure would've delighted Virginia Woolf.  read more »

As far as Fashion Week parties go, Thursday night's Interview magazine relaunch party at the yet-to-be finished Standard Hotel in the meatpacking district will be hard to top. The Standard is still a construction zone—exposed wire, plywood laid down for walkways, DJs in hard hats—and the effect was very much early '90s East Berlin, except for all the New York darlings wandering around, thrilled at the prospect of a new party venue.

Arden Wohl was there. Donna Karan was there. Gossip Girl’s Taylor Momsen made an appearance, as did model Jessica Stam, author Tama Janowitz, real estate developer Janna Bullock, socialite Stella Schnabel, and actresses Mary-Kate Olsen and Lauren Hutton.  read more »

On Thursday evening, a crowd of very well-dressed people gathered at the private club Norwood on West 14th Street for cocktails and a screening of a film directed by Tara Subkoff to promote her new line for Bebe. The film—"inspired from my favorite film noirs from back in the day," Ms. Subkoff told us—starred model Lydia Hearst, whom we found upstairs posing for photos on a white chaise alongside Ms. Subkoff.

We asked Ms. Hearst about her plans during Fashion Week. "I'm doing the full circuit this year, so I'm excited—it's amazing to go out, to get dressed up every night," she said.  read more »

"People feel like, just because you like to dress well ... that don't mean you're gay! I don't know where that came from!" said Andre Benjamin, a.k.a. Andre 3000 of Outkast, at the launch of his men's clothing line at Barneys last night. He wore some of the line, called Benjamin Bixby, himself: a red polo shirt with a big white "X" on the front, loose-fitting jeans held up by suspenders, wide-brimmed fedora (think George Clooney in the recent flop Leatherheads). "My thing is the 1930s," explained Mr. Benjamin, who was besieged by admirers near a railing overlooking the women's floor below and guarded by a publicist.  read more »

Thursday night, on the eve of Fashion Week, a noir-ish crowd including Kelly Osborne, nightlife-loving model Agyness Deyn, designer Henry Holland, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and the ubiquitous Misshapes DJs wandered through Christie's galleries at a preview party for the auction house's fall sales of Postwar and Contemporary Art, Impressionist and Modern Art, and Resurrection: Avant-Garde Fashion. The latter was present in abundance, on mannequins dressed in vintage Versace and pale, generously eyelinered attendees who looked like they'd skipped lunch ... for a month.

Speaking of! Will the fashion industry's recent efforts to police the size of its models result in meatier mannequins this Fashion Week?

"I was hoping that it would be curvier models on the runway," said Mary Alice Stephenson, celebrity stylist and host of fashion's greatest reality show to date, America's Most Smartest Model.  read more »

If Gossip Girl didn't exist, it—or rather, She—would have to be invented. With barbarians at the crossings and cultural turpitude rotting the very Manhattan schist beneath our feet, She alone upholds Truth and Beauty and Order. In the postlapsarian moral universe of today's New York, God, and Wharton and Fitzgerald and Bradshaw, are dead; long live Gossip Girl.

Does this city deserve a muse and creator who imagines it better, stronger, nobler than it's been in untold generations, or ever? Unveiled last autumn, the first episode of the series opened with the return of Serena van der Woodsen—the once and future dauphine of Park Avenue; her surname, a plaintive lament for the town's old Dutch aristocracy, long ago suppressed by the arrival of vulgar Britons—after a semester abroad at a New England boarding school.  read more »

Lindsay Lohan turned down an offer of $700,000 to do an eight-page spread in Playboy's 55th anniversary issue. [P6]

Comedian and host Russell Brand isn't giving details on Britney Spears's plans for opening the 25th MTV VIdeo Music Awards, saying only that she will not be "serving canapés or doing a bizarre haircut on herself." [US Weekly] Ms. Spears's mother Lynne is being less discreet—her tell-all book, Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World," is coming out next week and salacious details have already been leaked. " [NYDN]

The reality show starring social people Devorah Rose, Teddy John, Kristian Laliberte, Annabel Vartanian, Brianna Swanson, Kerry Cassidy, and Timo Weiland will be called Social Heights and is being described as "Like The Hills but in Manhattan .  read more »