These are difficult times for hedge fund king Paul Tudor Jones but he was all smiles as the guest of honor at last night's 11th annual NYU Child Study Center Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street. Joining Jones and his wife Sonia (left) was the center's director, Harold Koplewicz, co-chairs (and fellow finance big wigs) Gary Cohn and Lisa Pevaroff, David and Danielle Ganek, and Michael Novogratz and wife Sukey, and a crowd of nearly 600, including Vera Wang and Arthur Becker, Jon Corzine, Elie Wiesel, Jane and Jimmy Buffett, Ellen Barkin, Erica Jong, Jane Rosenthal, Christiane Celle, Faith Popcorn, Al D'Amato, Larry Silverstein and wife Klara, Neal Shapiro and Juju Chang, Julie and Ed Minskoff, Elaine and Ken Langone, Susan and Martin Lipton, Claude Wasserstein, Linda and Arthur Carter, Alice and Tom Tisch, Vicki and Stuart Match Suna, and Brooke and Dan Neidich. [PMc, NYSD]

The Horror: The Hills continues to rapidly spin off any supporting character with a hint of intelligence, and so it is that incredibly fearsome People's Revolution head Kelly Cutrone will be getting her own series, produced by Project Runway refugee company Magical Elves. "Think of it as The Wizard of Oz meets Stephen King meets Rhoda," explained Cutrone. That's the doomsday logline spirit, Kel! [Page Six]

♦ It's not just creditors going after Donald Trump these days: An employee of Trump's golf course in LA says in a lawsuit that the club prohibited her from taking lunch and bathroom breaks. She's only asking for $15,000, though, so obviously she didn't learn much during her stint working for the real estate mogul. [TMZ]
♦ A lawyer for Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos says there's "not a shred of truth" to the rumors the couple is splitting up. [OK!]
♦ Britney Spears' birthday party didn't exactly go as planned. None of her close friends showed up and onlookers say she spent the whole time looking "vacant" and "empty." [R&M, P6]
♦ NBC is furious that news of David Gregory's Meet the Press promotion leaked earlier this week. The likely culprit? NBC political director Chuck Todd. [P6]

♦ Julia Restoin Roitfeld might call herself a designer, but apparently the fat fees from modeling are hard to resist: She's been cast in the new Mango campaign along with celebuspawn Dakota Johnson Griffith. [WWD]
♦ PR maven Kelly Cutrone may play a hard-nosed bitch on The Hills, but in real life she's all heart: After reading about Marie Conde, who fought with three muggers who snatched her purse, Cutrone collected gifts for the 26-year-old nurse's aide, including Longchamp purses, jewelry, and dinner at the SoHo Grand. [NYP]
♦ During an interview conducted, of course, lying down in a hotel room at Claridge's in London, Diane von Furstenberg is expansive on matters personal (such as her first and only female lover), her "naughtiness" during the seventies, and her political opinions: Barack Obama is "so intelligent and very detached... It gives him perspective." [Telegraph]

Chris Noth is 54 today. Fashion publicity powerhouse (and Hills regular) Kelly Cutrone is turning 43. Whoopi Goldberg turns 53. Gerard Butler is 39. Director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride) is turning 74. Former Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde is 45. Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture turns 30. Actor Neil Flynn (Scrubs) is 48. Joe Mantegna is 61. And the least funny late-night host on TV, Jimmy Kimmel, turns 41 today.

Matthew Broderick riding his bike in Tribeca ... Keri Russell crossing the street ... Gavin Rossdale signing autographs outside ABC ... Kelly Ripa jogging outside for a TV segment ... Ugly Betty's Becki Newton and Michael Urie hugging on the sidewalk ... Alex Rodriguez leaving a parking garage in Midtown ... Kelly Cutrone in Soho, screaming on her cell phone ... Nastia Liukin on the set of Gossip Girl ... Zac Efron, Ashley Tisdale, and Vanessa Hudgens leaving lunch at Serendipity 3 on East 60th ... Katie Holmes getting out of an SUV outside the Schoenfeld Theatre ... and Tom Cruise and Suri boarding a helicopter.

♦ If Sarah Palin was on the cover of Elle, what would she look like? "Two words," says Joe Zee: "Blowout and contact lenses." That's actually four words, Joe, but we get the point. [Daily Intel]
♦ Today in bizarre publicity stunts: Wal-Mart is opening a pop-up store in Times Square, and will also have a truck "roving around the city to celebrate the launch of AC/DC's new album." [Reuters via Curbed]
♦ Kelly Cutrone won't be appearing on Whitney Port's new show on MTV: "I didn't really feel like it was a great idea to be on a spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff." [The Cut]
♦ Sofia Coppola's goal in designing for Louis Vuitton was "to create the perfect bag that doesn't exist." The result is the $2,190 "SC" purse. [IHT]

• The inimitable Fug Girls were at Yigal Azrouël today and saw Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann (not sweating in leather pants, enthusiastically posing for a photographer), Miss J Alexander and Nigel Barker (chatting front row), Cory Kennedy (bored, disheveled), Alexis Bryan Morgan (still pregnant), Fabiola Beracasa (front row next to Katie Lee Joel), Nina Garcia (talking to reporters), and Kelly Cutrone (looking better in person than on TV). [The Cut]

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 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.

• Even though Whitney Port may have the least fake career on The Hills, her alleged PR job at Diane von Furstenberg won't involve actual working, will it? [The Cut]
  

• New Yorker editor Sarah Morrison spills about the style issue out today, and about what makes Ariel Levy's profile of Marc Jacobs so intriguing. [The Daily]

The founder of the public relations, branding, and marketing firm, People's Revolution, Cutrone is known for letting her, um, abrasive attitude run rampant on reality shows like The Hills, The City, and Kell on Earth.

Kelly Cutrone continues to be a scary, awesome delight. The PR maven recently sat down with MediaBistro to talk about her public relations firm, People's Revolution, and about her increasingly frequent presence on MTV reality soap schlock The Hills. Cutrone has a six-year-old daughter and does constantly worry, she says, about where girls get their ideals from, whether it be from Disney cartoons, Hannah Montana, or The Hills. The interviewer asked her to explain the success of the gross, glossy docusoap and Cutrone's answer was typically informed, a little nutty, and mostly funny considering she's kinda criticizing a show she's about to be on a lot. Read her answer, which involves theories about High School Musical and showbiz narcissism, after the jump.

So, uh, Kelly Cutrone is basically one of the coolest, scariest (and one of the New Yorkiest) persons ever, judging from this week's brief but fascinating Observer piece. The head of hip PR firm People's Revolution, Cutrone has gained some notoriety of late for her acidic, bitchy, demanding taskmaster presence on MTV's reality soap The Hills. While overseeing that show's Whitney Port (and, to a lesser degree, its star Lauren Conrad), Cutrone cut a dashing, intimidating figure. She was at turns warm and helpful, and at others brash and terrifying. This enigmatic, enjoyably jarring persona is only deepened by the Observer piece, but there's just too much interesting info provided to summarize succinctly. So, I've bulleted some of the more intriguing tidbits about Ms. Cutrone after the jump.

Fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone, the founder of People's Revolution and the black-swathed bitch on The Hills, isn't known for being particularly lovable. She bans from shows people who dare to bad-mouth her clients and will have you escorted to the door in a heartbeat if you dare approach Anna Wintour to try and ask a question without first clearing it with her. And she's never been afraid to take her claws out. ("I would never rep Versace, I can’t stand her, I think she makes disgusting clothes.") But who knew she had such a sweet romantic life! The former assistant to Susan Blond and erstwhile Warhol scenester has much to keep her busy at her Soho loft.

You read Us Weekly for the articles. You can't help but be interested in what Lindsay Lohan snorted, ran her car into or slept with this week. But, you went to college, you read the new Chabons and Lethems as soon as they come out! You're not a vapid person! Good news: Celebrity is not only a major driver of the economy, it's a subject worthy of academic scrutiny. University of Southern California professor Elizabeth Currid, PhD., explains the sociology of fame and pop culture.

Isaiah Wilner, the twentysomething Yalie who published a book about the "media scandals" surrounding Time's founders last year, may be kicking up a bit of a scandal of his own. According to a recent Page Six item, Wilner's working on an article about hot-topic social gal Olivia Palermo for New York magazine. Per Page Six, Olivia fears that she might end up regretting having spoken to Wilner without her new publicist Kelly Cutrone present. But judging from Palermo's brief but storied history of mindfuckery, that item might be a ruse—the same kind of attempt to drum up sympathy as that famous groveling letter to her fellow socialites.

An item yesterday gave an account of how fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone of People's Revolution, unhappy with a Sydney Morning Herald gossip item about two of her clients, banned SMH journalist and blogger Patty Huntington from all of her clients' shows. Cutrone posted fliers (right) instructing staff to keep Huntington out of the Jeremy Scott show; she then called Huntington and told the writer that she would make it her mission to interfere with "the rest of [Huntington's] journalistic career," and, for extra measure, Cutrone would sue, as her father is a high-powered lawyer. Masterful PR work, that.

Now that Bryant Park has returned to its natural state of refuge for cubicle bees on their breaks, we can look back on Fashion Week with a fond eye and remember the people who make it all possible, like People's Revolution flack Kelly Cutrone, who represents a number of popular, edgy designers and oversees a considerable handful of shows.