Vogue's Success on New York Fashion’s Night

Just for one night New York City seemed to forget that there was an economic recession. Streets were packed, stores were crowded and flocks of people were carrying shopping bags on Madison Avenue. And close to 1,000 were crammed around the second-floor escalators at the Macy’s in Queens Center to gawk at the uncommon sight of Anna Wintour, Michael Kors, Diane Von Furstenberg, Kate Hudson, the cast of “Hair” and a pack of reporters, all corralled together in the career sportswear department.

Ms. Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, was making a rare public appearance Thursday night in a store that does not carry Prada (save for the perfume). As her magazine is dependent on the health of designer businesses and luxury stores, it seemed that she would do almost anything to coax people to shop again, leading a caravan of handlers from Queens to Bergdorf Goodman and much later to Sean Combs’s store on Fifth Avenue as part of a retail promotion called Fashion’s Night Out. More than 800 stores held parties and kept their doors open until 11 p.m. Mr. Kors, the fashion designer, said they were “beating the tom-toms” for starving retailers.

Ms. Wintour’s appearance in a Queens shopping mall to kick off the event was a gesture to show that the idea of holding shopping parties during a recession was not, in her words, “elitist.”

“It’s bigger than our wildest dreams,” Ms. Wintour said while waiting for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to arrive. He was half an hour late, and it looked as if her patience was waning.

“We’re just hoping that our global fashion stimulus package works,” she said, the New York Times reports.

News Agencies also report, the September Issue, R. J. Cutler's tasty account of how the 9/07 edition of Vogue came together, takes as a given that the glossy is the style bible and editor Anna Wintour the fashion pope.

These likewise were the assumptions of The Devil Wears Prada, a fictionalized version of Vogue and the pontiff nicknamed "Nuclear Wintour" for her frosty demeanor.

Yet from Cutler's vantage as the fly on the Fendi fur eavesdropping on editorial meetings, the September issue is not the product of an authoritarian regime. It is closer to push-pull between the pope and a powerful cardinal, Grace Coddington, the magazine's creative director.

In this compulsively entertaining documentary, the women are collaborative combatants.

Ladies and gentlemen, in this corner, in floral sheath and cardigan, the helmet-bobbed Wintour. In the other, in Boho black, the flowing-maned Coddington. And when they lock horns, they say to the camera what they are too vexed to say to each other. In other words, The September Issue has more affinity with The Office than with Project: Runway.

A fiction filmmaker couldn't invent more colorful antagonists than the hard-bodied Sphinx behind the oversize sunglasses and crossed arms and the Rubensian redhead open with her arms and her feelings, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

It was also reported, if you are a foodie, or simply hungry, stop by Opening Ceremony on Howard Street for snacks from Van Leeuwen’s artisan ice cream and Momofuku Milk Bar while checking out some cute limited editions made for the event, like Band of Outsiders clip-on bow ties and Rodarte’s creepy Kurt Cobain tote bags made with Rebekah Miles. Ralph Lauren’s stores on Bleecker Street will have cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery (but watch out for Blake Lively, an expected guest and admitted cupcake scarfer). If you are in Williamsburg, try the block party on North First Street organized by Bird, which promises an ice cream truck, popcorn and cotton candy and a limited number of $100 Vena Cava dresses.

If you are a reporter for In Touch Weekly, head to Bergdorf at 7 p.m., where the Olsen twins are bartending and Victoria Beckham is signing T-shirts; then dash down to Saks to see Justin Timberlake at 8 p.m.; and end your night at Jeffrey in the meatpacking district, where Chace Crawford is to appear at 9, followed by Hugh Jackman and Sean Avery at 10:30.

And if you are a shopper, well, you can do that anytime, the New York Times reports.