If someone invited you to a dinner party, and told you that the other guests would include poet Maya Angelou, designer Stella McCartney, Ambassador Susan Rice, and comedienne Amy Poehler (oh, and Michelle Obama might just stop by for appetizers), how long would it take you to leap out of...

As the creative director of Vogue, Grace Coddington might have the best job in fashion. While Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour has been making the magazine powerful over the last two decades, Coddington has been making it beautiful.

When The September Issue - a documentary about Vogue - recently came out,...

It's early in the morning (for me, anyway), but Audrey Tautou has been up for hours, doing television interviews. She's curiously intense for someone who's been subjected to such a barrage; she gestures broadly as she speaks, her El Greco-like hands as eloquent as she is.

Yes, she is a...

Fashion Week is underway in New York City, and American designers are showcasing their visions of the future. Our fashion world heavyweights - Donna, Calvin, and Marc - are further cementing their legends; the next generation of designers, such as Jason Wu, Thakoon, and Derek Lam, are building theirs.

I'm...

In the September issue of Harper's Bazaar, the editors ran a cutesy feature titled 'What Would Coco Do?'. With the new film Coco Before Chanel due out this autumn, says the headline, "Bazaar wondered what the notoriously feisty Madame Chanel would say about the world after Chanel. So...

Two months ago, we ran a feature titled Six of the World's Most Beautiful Older Women. To our amazement, nearly 900 comments poured in and the piece went widely viral. Clearly a nerve had been struck.

The article was, at heart, a celebration of women's beauty at every stage...

I just saw a recent picture of comedienne Joan Rivers that made me want to throw up. Her face is now stretched tighter than a piano string; her mouth and snout bear more than a passing resemblance to that grotesque "cat-woman," Jocelyn Wildenstein.

"I've had so much plastic surgery,"...

When the Obamas ascended to the White House earlier this year, many Washingtonians breathed a sigh of relief: after serving a grim eight-year sentence in the Prison of No Fun, they were finally up for parole. The capital's social life was about to come alive again at last.

Looking back...

Tonight Vogue and the MET Costume Institute will co-host their annual gala, considered by many to be fashion's most glamorous event. This year's theme - "Model as Muse" - seems like a fairly unimaginative concept for a fashion event, until you remember that popular actresses have been elbowing models off...

HBO's film remake of 1975 documentary Grey Gardens finally airs amidst great fanfare tonight. Both the film and the documentary feature the lives of two society belles-turned-eccentric-shut-ins: a mother (nicknamed "Big Edie," played by Jessica Lange in the upcoming film) and daughter (known as "Little Edie," courtesy of Drew Barrymore...

Last year at this time, you'd likely never heard the name Jason Wu.

Sure, he's been designing clothes since the age of nine, and after his 2006 debut collection he became the darling of the Vogue and Bergdorf circuit. Yet Wu was hardly a household name.

Then, on...

If there's a silver lining to this recession, it may be that Americans are less willing to buy tons of expensive crap for each other during the holidays.

As we all know, consumers are massively scaling back on holiday shopping this year. This is bad news for retailers, but...

Illustrations by Maddy Simpson.

So, the economy's in the toilet, and we'll all be fighting over cans of Beenie Weenie soon.

But just remember: poverty doesn't have to be inconvenient for those accustomed to the best. Weathering tough times in style just takes a little creativity.

Introducing my satirical...

I'm a very modern woman. After all, modernity is so terribly convenient. My blackberry connects me with my best friend in Dubai as I sail up 5th Avenue in a taxi; my DVR records Mad Men when Sunday night dinners run late; my iPod conjures up Brigitte Bardot, Rachmaninoff, or...

At last: fall is arriving. In fashion terms, autumn means tall, gorgeous boots; it means delicious layers of cashmere. Ta ta, ugly gladiator sandals; hello, luscious leopard-print swing coats.

What it also means: those mega-issues of Vogue, Bazaar, and W have been weighing down newsstands and crippling postal-workers across the...

If we were to play a game of word association, and I said, "Candace Bushnell," you'd likely think of Sex and the City; or more specifically, you'd think of Carrie Bradshaw, the love-seeking, fashionplate heroine of SATC, long considered Bushnell's alter-ego.

Bushnell would tell you that in the early days...

If any fashion editor ever deserved her own television show, it would be the legendary Candy Pratts Price. Few women can boast her institutional knowledge; nor can they match her famous big-personality persona.

With New York's Fashion Week now underway, I checked in with Ms. Price, the executive fashion...

Another day, another battle.

An annoying, seemingly inevitable battle, with one or more of the following foes: technology, delays, bad hair, wretched colleagues, etc.

We're told not to sweat the small stuff, but who really follows this advice?

Let's face it: daily life is comprised of the small stuff...

It's easy for Cate Blanchett or Kiera Knightley to look glorious on the red carpet: they have gaggles of stylists, make-up artists, and the world's most prominent designers adorning them.

Many other fashionable women celebrated by Vogue and its ilk have wallets the size of their grand...

At first, the beads looked like regular beads to me. Pretty, but nothing wildly out of the ordinary.

"Look closer," advised jewelry designer Lisa Salzer.

So I did. I noticed that the beads were delicately ridged, like a shell. There was something unusual and beautiful about the color of them.