After foolishly losing hold of megastar editor and Project Runway judge Nina Garcia, Elle has been scrambling to recreate its TV buzz with a reality fashion show called Stylista, in which contestants vie to become a fashion editor. The presumptive star of this effort, Anne Slowey, starts with several strikes against her. She did an unconvincing Miranda Priestly imitation in an embarrassing trailer for Stylista; looked like the loopy hippie to Garcia's polished fashion plate in a New York magazine profile and some Web videos; and came up through the ghettoized editorial side of Elle rather than the fashion side. Enter Sunday's Page Six Magazine profile of Elle creative director Joe Zee, "the celeb whisperer" who, face it, is poised to be Elle's real breakout TV star, Slowey be damned. There are any number of reasons, but you can start with the fact that Zee got Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley to pose naked together in Vanity Fair:

"Fashion Rocks" is Conde Nast's big advertorial extravaganza pegged to Fashion Week, when the magazine company can sell extra ad space to all its fashion advertisers in a fluffy, profile-heavy special supplements. But we hear that the staff of the Conde-owned WWD is currently embroiled in a mini-revolt, after they were ordered to write the copy for the 48-page Fashion Rocks supplement that went out with yesterday's issue. There's no reason an editorial staff should ever be made to write advertorial copy. The most egregious line-crossing of all: a full-page interview in the supplement with Richard Beckman, Conde Nast's own head of marketing. Beckman, of course, would be the mastermind of the entire Fashion Rocks campaign, so what the hell is a fluff interview of him doing in a WWD-penned special supplement, posing as legit editorial copy? Staffers there are asking themselves the same thing. They feel that Mary Berner, who formerly led Fairchild and WWD before it was all absorbed into Conde Nast, would never have stood for such a thing. On MediaPost yesterday, Ari Rosenberg decried the whole ongoing degeneration of the advertising/ editorial line. "Today's media-buying demand for a 'big idea' required to earn a media commitment, combined with a softer and more competitive environment, all driven by a sales force that has no idea who Henry Luce is, have publishers doing things not done before," he wrote. Which leads to this:

1) One of many Fashion Week kick-off events was the Agyness Deyn-hosted, Thierry Mugler-sponsored bash last night at Christie's, where Chloë Sevigny, Henry Holland, Kelly Osbourne, Peaches Geldof, Yigal Azrouël, Kelly Cutrone, Paul Sevigny, Kate Schelter, Jennifer Creel, Holly Dunlap, Genevieve Jones, Jen Cohen, Dori Cooperman, Ellen Von Unwerth, Padma Lakshmi, and Mary Alice Stephenson previewed the auction house's fall sales of post-war and contemporary art, impressionist and modern art, and fashion. [The Daily, Wireimage, NYO]

The meatpacking district's transformation from industrial no-man's land into crowded consumer destination will be complete when Barneys opens for business. The designer mecca has taken premises for a 50,000 square foot, multi-level store at West 13th and Washington, at the southern end of what will be the High Line Park. More eagerly anticipated by fashionistas who prefer to spend $200 rather than $2,000 on a dress, though, is Top Shop, which was due to open in October in SoHo but has been delayed once again, and "is racing to launch in time for holiday selling."

Hey, Yves Saint Laurent designer Stefano Pilati started a magazine! It's called Manifesto. Hey guy, "Manifesto," really? I mean, didn't Vivienne Westwood take that name already? Anyhow, the story is that PIlati started giving out the magazine in canvas logo tote bags — "as a gesture" — he says, but no one gave a shit about the magazines, all anyone wanted was the fucking logo bags, and now he is "going to have to" start producing the logo bags for stores. Which, when you remember the whole point of Manifesto in the first place was to better display YSL clothes because all anyone cares about these days seems to be the logoed accessories is so poignantly circular…so "Gift of the Magi" you know? But let's be honest Stef: no one ever really looks at the magazines they get in goody bags at parties. This does not mean print is dead.It just means print gets kind of gross after it gets a few complimentary Chambord-sponsored cocktails on it. There are very few magazines I take home from such parties and actually read. Chiefly because I am drunk. But I have, later on, gone back and purchased magazines I got for free at parties. That's just the way it goes. They're on newsstands everywhere. Maybe I would change this policy if you every magazine were $7 on newsstands like Harper's. But I'm with Esquire editor in chief David Granger here, print is not dead, it is just not something tipsy Fashion Week goers who probably already work at magazines and thus get them all for free anyway are going to appreciate when they are busy heaving into the Bryant Park portapotties. [NYT]

Mere mortals who don't work in the industry, but who have an American Express platinum card or a serious shopping addiction to their favorite designer, can attend Fashion Week shows along with the buyers, media, and assorted celebrities and hangers on. By purchasing pricy packages through Amex, you'll get to see the show and be taken backstage to meet, say, Phillip Lim, Diane von Furstenberg, or Tory Burch, who are no doubt thrilled at the prospect of interrupting their frantic activities to make chit chat with starstruck fans from New Jersey.

A dancing Perez Hilton will sell you Levi's. Wait; no he won't. ["Perez Unbuttoned"]

• Designers must be clawing each others' eyes out to get Gossip Girl cast members at their shows. Well, score one for Rock and Republic, which has confirmed Chace Crawford will be in attendance. Maybe he'll turn up with Amanda Hearst, whom he was allegedly trying to "cozy up" with this past weekend. [Fashionista]

Is America ready for fashion endorsements from regular people? To clarify, "regular" means "A person who is famous in some way, but not pretty." It's a heartwarming concept, but the answer is "no." Americans will never relinquish our devotion to models (though we have been known to tolerate slightly less anorexic models). But! What if said "regular person" is the woman who spawned superhuman American fish hero Michael Phelps? Still no: Debbie Phelps, Michael's mom, has signed a six-figure endorsement deal with Chico's, the company that made most of the clothes she wore in the stands at the Olympics. Michelle Obama is also on the record as a Chico's fan!

Classy: Michael Phelps' 57-year-old mom, Debbie Phelps, has signed an endorsement deal with Chico's, the chain where she picked up her outfits for her trip to Beijing. [WSJ]

The most important meme of our era, new v. old media, is stressing out the PR people who act as gatekeepers to Fashion Week. All the fashion bloggers want access to the shows, but who knows whether they'll conduct themselves professionally? Or write the kind of appropriately fawning copy that you can depend upon when 16 pages of ads will magically disappear otherwise? Yet no one wants to completely relinquish the exposure bloggers provide either, especially since it's becoming reasonably clear that this thing known as the internet is taking over the world.

Well done, Indian Vogue: You haven't even reached your first birthday and already you've provoked earnest hand-wringing in the international media. A 16-page editorial in the August issue, which displayed an array of designer accessories, like a $200 Burberry umbrella and a Hermes Birkin bag, on actual members of India's poverty-stricken society, was "downright distasteful," says a newspaper columnist quoted in the Times. The magazine's editor Priya Tanna, however, is unrepentant, and thinks everyone should just "lighten up." She also might want to remind people that Vogue has a long and distinguished history of exploiting poor natives of third world countries for background color in fashion shoots—there's just normally an anorexic Western model present too.

Nearly half of India's population lives on less than $1.25 per day. And yet Vogue India thought everyday Indians would be perfect models for a $10,000 Hermes handbag, $200 Burberry umbrella and $100 Fendi baby bib. The models' lack of teeth and shoes and their dirt flooring only made the products look all the more attractive to India's growing upper class, apparently. But thousands of indebted Indian farmers committed suicide over the past decade, leading one local newspaper columnist to call the ads "tacky... downright distasteful... [an] example of vulgarity." Vogue India editor Priya Tanna thinks her critics are being way too glum:

The president of a venerable Montreal retailer is pulling some 450,000 of the the store's catalogs because he decided the models were too thin. Says Peter Simons of La Maison Simons, who claims he was on vacation when the catalogs were printed: "We are into social responsibility here.... I'm fully aware of what it is and I'm taking full responsibility… It's my job to ensure that we are a constructive actor in the community. I should have done better. I should have seen it." Well, holy overblown contrition, Pete, it's not like you asked the models to watch you masturbate like I hear is the retailing executive custom up there in Montreal! In any case, this is the most emaciated-looking picture I could find on the internet from the La Maison Simons catalog — its private label is called "Twik" — so for good measure thought I'd go back and upload my favorite pic from the pages of that other great publication and crusader against eating disorders, Teen Vogue.That's more like it!

"It's stupid to be homophobic," mused a guy working in a downtown bar last night. "And it's really stupid to be homophobic if you're in the restaurant business. And it's really stupid to be homophobic if you're in the fashion business." The subject of his rant: Taavo Somer, the 35-year-old owner of faux-rustic LES hipster haven Freemans and faux-nautical bar The Rusty Knot and proprietor of his own fashion line of $88 t-shirts. Somer was anointed by New York magazine this year as "the next groovy thing," the embodiment of forward-thinking hipster cool. But this ex-employee was of the opinion that Taavo is an ass [UPDATE: Even more opinions now, below!]: According to this guy—who worked at one of Somers' places for an extended period of time—Somer is not just a homophobe; he is dumb. I believe the approximate descriptor was, "big, idiotic bigot." He described Somer as an "idiot savant," able to build successful restaurants while being, simultaneously, "one of the stupidest people I ever met." He also said just about everyone who's worked in Somers' establishments can't stand him. The conversations, he said, go like this: "Oh, you used to work at Freemans?" (*Shakes head in dismay*). Of course, Taavo can always escape to his upstate estate if things get too negative in the city. Just one ex-employee's opinion! Feel free to email us a rebuttal, Taavo. UPDATE: We've received two additional notes about Taavo. The first comes from restaurateur Ken Friedman, Taavo's business partner:

Forget the speeches and the platform, the delegate votes and the big Barack Obama speech tonight. Political conventions are nothing if not stages on which the craziest campaign volunteers — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have them! — can strut around in their wildest costumes. No one's been spotted with a sticker on their forehead yet, even though that's a trademark move of Clinton's crazier supporters, or wearing an Abercrombie shirt, even though that's the preferred apparel of Barack Obama's emptiest young volunteers. But the hoi polloi are coming to the big stadium event tonight, so anything is still possible. So far the DNC has seen hats and other attire in flavors vaguely gay, cowboyish, flag-desecrating, Mexican and just plain insane. There's a photo gallery after the jump, culled (mostly) by our own Richard Blakeley from the sea of convention footage.

The maxim "all publicity is good publicity" will be sorely tested by the Observer's profile of Jeff Goldstein, the 32-year-old party promoter-turned-boutique owner who, despite a reasonably respectable pedigree—high school at Hunter, Skidmore, five years in banking, childhood friends with major namedroppability like Charlotte Ronson and Shoshanna Lonstein—apparently conducts himself like Willy Loman on roids. Potential customers to his store Blue & Cream are yelled at from the entrance, reports Irina Aleksander ("Hey, guys! This is a great men's and women's clothing store!") while he himself admits that "[s]ometimes I think I scare away people. I mean I don't even look like Mr. Fashion, I'm just a regular guy."

Judging from the Times Style section profile of Michael Kors, the Project Runway judge can't go out in public without being recognized and accosted. But what's the financial upside on Kors' two-year association with the fantastically popular reality show? Kors' sales at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan are up 50 percent over three years, which is encouraging. But some of that success has to be credited to a 2003 capital infusion from two British jewelry investors and, allegedly, to Kors' dogged prowling of sales floors. When the Times finally buttonholed a Kors company executive into estimating the financial benefit from Runway specifically, the returns aren't so bright as the anecdotes suggest: An estimated mere 5 percent bump in gross sales thanks to Runway. The Times' Style writer doesn't say if this compounds each year or is a one-time increase, but a business reality show judge would be fast with a mean quip either way. [Times]

Project Runway mensch Tim Gunn does not approve of Katie Holmes' baggy jeans. And now you know that important fact.

We have to say this for the porntastic anonymous American Apparel ad spoofer: he or she is just so god damn aware of the vagaries of pseudoculture that it is impossible not to admire his or her attention-getting sensibility. Unless, of course, this all turns out to be paid for by Dov Charney, in which case you can expect a very sternly worded rebuke from us. So watch out. Today, the personal (wear) becomes political; it's The Assassination of Barack Obama as imagined not by a publicity-seeking artist Yazmany Arboleda, but by publicity-seeking artist "anonymous spoofer." And of course a big dick is involved, for reasons we can't quite understand: