Louis Vuitton celebrated Marc Jacobs' new collection in honor of Stephen Sprouse last night with an exhibition preview, cocktail event, and after-party. Marc and boyfriend Lorenzo Martone (left) were joined by a long list of fashion, art, and society types, including Donna Karan, Leigh Lezark, Nicole Miller, Jeffrey Deitch, Anna Sui, Patricia Field, Patrick McDonald, Erin Fetherston, Russell Simmons, Rachel Roy, Linda Fargo, Nina Garcia, Anne Slowey, Agyness Deyn, Molly Sims, Bettina Zilkha, Andrew Saffir, Jane Holzer, Tim and Helen Lee Schifter, Lisa Falcone, Terence Koh, Adi, Coco and Ice-T, Casey Spooner, David Hershkovits, Kim Hastreiter, Rogan Gregory, Chanel Iman, Eva Amurri, Fabiola Beracasa, Chuck and Candy Pratts Price, Brooke Shields, Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann, Mickey Boardman, Serena Bass and son Sam Shaffer, Glenda Bailey, Robert Burke, Peter Marino, Andres and Lauren Santo Domingo, Marjorie Gubelmann, Paul Sevigny, Andre Harrell, Andres Serrano, Stephen Knoll, Andrea Rosen, Maurizio Cattelan, Kipton Cronkite, Kehinde Wiley, Debbie Harry, Jackie Astier, Tatum O'Neal, Marcus Schenkenberg, Veronica Webb, Waris Ahluwalia, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Dr. Frederic Brandt, Monet Mazur, Peter Davis, Dori Cooperman, Mary Alice Stephenson, Melissa Berkelhammer, Luigi Tadini, and, of course, Patrick McMullan and son Liam McMullan. [PMc, Wireimage, NYO]

Marie Claire just wanted to wish everyone a "sparkling, joyful and warm holiday," but the magazine's flack forgot to Bcc, exposing precious celebrity email addresses to 582 people. Christmas is ruined!

There's something surreal/delightful about a swishy dressmaking contest provoking such a momentous battle between a couple of bald, middle-aged, Jewish heterosexuals. Yes, Harvey Weinstein and NBC's Jeff Zucker are still squabbling about Project Runway, and, to the chagrin of the show's many devoted fans, seem no closer to kissing and making up. For those of us who haven't managed to quite grasp the intricacies of this particular catfight, today's Times breaks it down: Weinstein, whose company produces the series, tried to move it from NBC-owned Bravo to Lifetime, because he hates Bravo's president Lauren Zalaznick. But Zucker said, hold on, NBC has the right of first refusal to keep the show on one of its channels, and filed suit.

Last week we offered to send you a Halloween mask free of charge. We ran through the supply pretty quickly and a number of you were left out in the cold. (Sorry about that!) For those of you who missed your chance—and provided you have access to a color printer—we've posted the masks online. So you can print them out yourselves in the event you still don't have a Halloween costume lined up. After the jump, our very special collection of seven masks, in case you feel like dressing up as Anderson Cooper, Mario Batali, Nina Garcia, Anne Hathaway, Keith Olbermann, Vikram Pandit, or Al Sharpton.

♦ The election, the economy, and Madonna and Guy all faded into insignificance last night when MTV aired the first clip of The City, and we saw our girl Whitney stepping inside Diane von Furstenberg HQ and getting ambivalently eyeballed by Olivia Palermo (who seems to have a weirdly strong screen presence). [NYO, NYP]
♦ The sixth season of Project Runway has wrapped: Rebecca Romijn, Eva Longoria and Lindsay Lohan reportedly make guest judge appearances, although regular judges Nina Garcia and Michael Kors earn less airtime than before. Yet due to legal issues we can't wrap our mind around much less summarize, no one knows when or where the show will air. [WWD]

♦ Did you expect Anne Slowey to play down the reported feud between herself and Nina Garcia? Au contraire: "I'm not even really conscious of the fact that, oh yeah, she used to work at Elle," bitches Slowey. [NYO]
♦ Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman has joined old-school jeweler Garrard as a guest designer. Good to know she's feeding the joint account now that husband Harvey's career isn't exactly on fire. On a related note, Marchesa's having a sample sale this week. [WWD, Teen Vogue]
♦ Kate Moss's transition from elusive to overexposed is officially complete, as she provides interview answers that miraculously manage to be even more mundane than the questions. Her "fail-safe party item," you'll be scintillated to hear, is a "little black dress." [Times UK]

Nina Garcia has a bossily-titled new book to publicize, The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own, which explains why she took time to talk with with the vaguely insufferable hipster parent site Babble.com about her one-year old. Little Lucas (full name: Lucas Alexander Conrod) wears "Chrome Hearts Tees and Burberry pants" that Garcia's fashionable friends have given him, even though she herself buys him inexpensive stuff. As for how she juggles motherhood and career, she says: "That's easy. He comes first." What, you don't think that appearing on Project Runway, being the fashion director of Marie Claire, and writing books would leave ample time for baby-bonding?

Not that fashion magazine jobs have traditionally attracted shy, retiring types but if you're going to work at a glossy, you should probably bear in mind that it means signing up to be on TV. Since Elle's massively successful collaboration with Project Runway—which saw both circulation and ad sales leap—other publications are viewing TV-tie-ins as integral to future success, reports AdAge. As well as Elle's new show Stylista, next March will bring Running In Heels, a show about the "inner workings" of Marie Claire featuring Nina Garcia. As long they uphold the high standard of no-holds-barred realism set by Whitney and Lauren in the Teen Vogue closet, they're sure to have a hit.

The pickup artist Mystery defined the "sniper neg" as an under-the-radar insult or backhanded compliment. Paging Nina Garcia! Her new boss, Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles, just sniper-negged her to Fashion Week Daily. Well, it's probably just an example of British no-nonsense bluntness, as opposed to the American tradition of blowing smoke up someone's ass (so to speak). What has Nina's presence done for the magazine? the Daily asked. "It's not clear what it's done so far, other than give us a ridiculous amount of attention..." Hey-o!Nina however, in the same issue, doesn't seem to worried:

["Project Runway" judge Nina Garcia at the Vera Wang show this morning; image via Getty] belltolls's new line beats the original, "Just This Morning A Small Child Played Me Like a Xylophone."

I get the sense Joanna Coles is one of those people whose unbridled enthusiasm for everything lends her a dorky quality that make her gargantuan ambitions somehow endearing. Since she took the editor-in-chief spot at Marie Claire two years ago, the magazine's newsstand sales have plunged nearly 30%, but you get the feeling she doesn't let it get her down! And anyway, people are paying attention to Joanna this Fashion Week because she just hired Project Runway judge Nina Garcia away from Elle. Fashion people sometimes say bitchy things about Joanna, mostly "that Joanna Coles is a nerdy poser who has to pay Nina to sit next to her at fashion shows," because fashion people are ridiculous and so is Joanna, a little bit. Just today Fashion Week Daily ran a huge long interview with her along with a little gossip item that seemed harmless but was actually sort of cruel! Read that and our Coles FAQ — and just for kicks, see a pic of Nina Garcia in a realllly short skirt — after the jump.

• Catfight! Marie Claire will be launching a reality show on the Style network called Running in Heels. The show will follow staffers like Nina Garcia and is expected to compete with archrival Anne Slowey's Stylista on the CW. [NYO, AdAge]

Well if it isn't a blessing from the Gawker Media Gods who brought us that pretty fundamentalist rape victim hating Alaska Governess! The Style Network plans to double your viewing rations of Project Runway judge Nina Garcia! This was known already, actually, but now there are details: the show is called Running in Heels and revolves around the staff of Marie Claire magazine, Elle having fired Garcia after deciding to make a reality show featuring Garcia rival Anne Slowey. Nina vs. Anne! Elle vs. Marie Claire! It is like Road Rules vs. The Real World, only…something we'll actually set our DVRs for! But can the show be anywhere near as awesome as the reality-TV-esque circumstances that enabled it to be?Nina told me1 last month she'd had plenty of offers to do other shows before, but didn't want to do a makeover show. She hasn't: According to Marie Claire, Running In Heels intends to "offer unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Marie Claire and the stylish, smart women who put the magazine together each month," including "private video confessionals," in which "viewers will learn how the interns cope with their jobs, their superiors and each other." That sounds so good!!! Except, of course, for two things: 1. Seriously, it's Marie Claire.2 How bad could the bullshit be at Marie Claire? The show runs the risk of being as boring as Vogue's stupid three million dollar "documentary" web show no one except Tatiana watches. At least Elle's Stylista has the virtue of being watchable, at minimum, as a trainwreck. 2. It's going to be on the Style Network. Which is owned by Comcast, unlike new Project Runway host Lifetime, which is half-owned by Marie Claire publisher Hearst. What kind of entertainment conglomerate snatches up Nina Garcia only to not air her new foray into "docu"-reality TV? Something is off there. My guess is that Nina, who is pretty controlling of her image, did not want to make a campy gossipy addictive voyeuristic Devil Wears Prada-type reality show when she is already, you know, famous.

At this point, 24's seventh season has been hit with more obstacles than the beleaguered Jack Bauer — so what's one more? After suffering through a WGA strike, a one-year delay, and a stint in jail for lead Kiefer Sutherland, the Fox drama is once again shutting down production, says EW. Producer Howard Gordon tells the mag that he was unhappy with the scripts for hours 19-24, so the show will power down until writers can start from scratch. Still, thanks to the eight episodes banked before the strike, producers don't expect the season premiere to be delayed any further — which is more than can be said for the Lifetime debut of Project Runway, now pushed back to January 2009. Originally slotted for this fall, where it would have followed quickly on the heels of its Bravo swan song, producers couldn't make the abbreviated schedule work. The delay lends Lifetime the extra time it will need to craft an all-important needlepoint challenge and secure the participation of "fashion legend" Meredith Baxter Birney as final judge at NY Fashion Week. [EW]

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:

Now that the McCain/Palin ticket has usurped Barack Obama to become the official celebrity story of the day, actual celebrities are weighing in on Palin, and the reception is mixed. Following in the footsteps of Palin critics Lindsay Lohan and Albert Brooks, here's the latest roundup of stars going political: · Heart's Nancy Wilson has taken umbrage at the use of their band's song "Barracuda" to introduce Palin at the RNC (Palin earned the nickname "Barracuda" during her high school basketball days). "I think it's completely unfair to be so misrepresented," she said to EW. "I feel completely fucked over." · Diddy has much warmer feelings toward the vice presidential candidate, though they're expressed in equally blue terms. "You did your thing," he said on his Diddy Blog after watching Palin's RNC speech. "You gave a speech that pretty much shut me the fuck up."

• 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]

• Lindsay Lohan is turning down a $700,000 offer to pose nude for Playboy, even though she took her top off for New York for free earlier this year. Maybe Hugh should call Dina Lohan? [P6]

Is fashion too gay? I know, I know, that is like asking, "do Americans love Jesus too much?" Like, maybe they do, but in general neither side is attempting to carbomb the other into submission and that is why Toqueville loved it here! But speaking of French transplants: many in the publishing world believe that Elle, America's second-biggest (and first-best) fashion magazine, has gotten "too gay" under great helmsman Joe Zee, who succeeded longtime "director" Gilles Bensimon, a lecherous Euro modelizer (who once was married to 'Elle' Macpherson!). Gilles was pushed out of the magazine in a protracted power struggle with Editor-in-chief Robbie Myers* that famously culminated in the firing of style director (and least gay person on Project Runway) Nina Garcia, and in came Joe at the beginning of last year. Gilles, who basically defined the magazine's look after 22 years in the job, liked to celebrate the "Essence of Woman"; Joe, a refugee from the male shopping rag Vitals, is more of an "Essence of Faghag" type. Opening arguments after the jump!Here, boiled down, are the arguments pro and con, which I gleaned in the process of chronicling the Anne Slowey-Nina Garcia Project Runway Stylista saga a couple weeks ago. As a non-consumer of fashion, I don't have a very strong personal opinion on the matter, but I bet I know someone who does! (Ha ha ha, well, my boss duh.) JOE ZEE'S ELLE = TOO GAY. Joe Zee is too gay. He is so gay he immediately brought in his gay boyfriend to work as the web editor. He thinks everyone should dress like Mary-Kate Olsen and he only likes gay celebrities like Mariah and Lindsay, except he is probably over Linds now that she is actually really gay. Everyone who loves him and thinks he is so nice is just fooled by the fact that he is a gay man and everyone knows gay men act nicer than straight men but deep down they are STILL MEN. Also he has ADD and is a self-promoter. When Gilles and Nina and their crew were running things, the magazine was classier and not so trendy and the halls were filled with the sounds of cool accents screaming at one another. Now everyone screams in American. Gilles' style was more timeless and feminine and less consumerporny and that's how it differentiated itself from Vogue. And seriously, why do you think Gilles is Tyra's favorite photographer? JOE ZEE'S ELLE = JUST GAY ENOUGH Whatevs! You are in America now, and in America people who like fashion (Marc! Tom! Christian Siriano!) are GAY. Like is it just through some bizarre series of unrelated circumstances that Elle resurrected its whole business thanks to its appearance on the gayest show on the gay network? And where do you expect all those mediagays to work, anyway? Men's magazines???? Hahahahahahahaha sorry, but the Fashion Week galas are just slightly better in women's! Oh, and Joe's boyfriend can actually code HTML, which is just a little more than slightly more qualified than we might say for that ex-wife Gilles made "editor in chief" of Elle Accessories! In any case, the rising generation of fashion consumers is a bunch of Fashion Spot-posting Project Runway marathoning MK-idolizing Santogold-muxtaping Andy Sachs wannabes with just the sort of warped priorities that sell fashion magazines, and you know what? When that generation invariably arrives in New York to waste its twenties buying boots and learning the hard way that there is no such thing as a free bump, it is going to need some real friends and guess what THOSE FRIENDS ARE ALL GAY. Okay everybody, recess! We'll follow up with some exhibits from both sides once we're reunited with our scanners.

Samantha and Mark Ronson (left) headed to lunch at Bar Pitti ... Michael Phelps turning up for an appearance on CBS' The Early Show ... Kim Kardashian getting out of an SUV near Times Square ... Lindsay Lohan shooting scenes on the set of Ugly Betty ... Kate Hudson and son Ryder going for a walk through the Village ... Gerard Butler leaving a lunch in SoHo ... Katie Holmes leaving rehearsals ... Nina Garcia promoting her new book at an event at Saks ... and Adrian Grenier walking through Midtown.