The theme of this year’s Met Costume Institute Gala—i.e., the Oscars of the East—was “the Model as Muse,” and the weedlike mannequins floating up the red carpet in weapons-grade shoes and teensy get-ups appeared only moderately more human than the “superheroes” that inspired last year’s ball.

Molly Sims called her elaborate gold Dolce & Gabbana minidress “fashion-forward, taking a chance, shorter than short, short, short.” She was also wearing a necklace by jeweler-of-the-moment Tom Binns. “I kinda push fashion tonight!”

“We’ve gotten our due for a long time,” she demurred when asked whether it was nice to be the center of attention for once. “But it’s nice.”

Short was the order of the evening: One of the last standing supermodels, Kate Moss, had arrived 35 minutes in advance of the start time on the arm of honorary gala chair Marc Jacobs, clad in a miniscule gold toga and matching turban.

Mr. Jacobs was uncharacteristically buttoned-up in tuxedo and slicked-back hair; he placed his hand stiffly on Ms. Moss’ back and the duo posed for a few photos before exchanging whispers and rushing past crushed television crews to the entrance atop the stairs. (Mr. Jacobs’ fiancé, advertising executive Lorenzo Martone, would later arrive on the arm of Posh Spice.)

Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, resplendent in an Isabel Toledo cape, was more voluble: “I gave a lot of advice to a lot of people, but they shall remain nameless because they don’t want me to say who I’m giving advice to,” he was telling a reporter nearby. (Last year, he’d dressed Venus Williams).

Russell Simmons looked on admiringly. “I once sat with André Leon Talley,” he said. “He’s the host of the event”—actually, it’s his boss, Anna Wintour—“he’s the inspiration for the whole thing, he’s got such good taste and everyone looks to him; he’s like fashion royalty, isn’t he?”

Mr. Talley was now telling a photographer who asked him to back up for a photo to “just take Obama!”, slapping an Obama button he’d pinned to his massive gold heart chain Roger Vivier necklace. “I had a good time,” he told The Observer of last year’s gala. “We went to the after-party, Venus and I, and Kimora [Lee Simmons] and Karl [Lagerfeld]; we had a fabulous time, it was at some restaurant, Phillipe …”

He declined to comment on how he planned to potentially get Mr. Obama to the ball in the future: “Ask Anna Wintour! I don’t answer those kind of questions, I have a mortgage to pay!”

Co-host Justin Timberlake appeared on the carpet in nerdy glasses with a Versace-clad Jessica Biel on his arm, and the photographers’ chorus of shouts reached a high pitch (rivaled only by the one greeting Posh Spice soon after, and, much later, Madonna).

Then came the moguls: Harvey, Donald, Rupert.

“How are you, my little beauty, are you still married?” Mr. Trump was asking a petite blond Fox News reporter as wife Melania posed for pictures down the carpet.

“I’ve been here many times, yes,” he told The Observer. “You just meet a lot of great people.” Who did he want to meet tonight? “I hadn’t thought about it, ask me after dinner!” Would that we were invited to dinner, sir!

The carpet was filling up with ethereal, slow-moving Russian and Eastern European mannequins, most wearing smoky eyeliner and messy hair and clutching the nerdy-looking young fashion designers who’d designed their outfits.

“She was lovely enough and gracious enough to ask me to be her date,” said designer Richard Chai of the Amazonian Karolina Kurkova, standing to his right in a, yes, short blue dress he’d designed. “I’ve known Karolina since she first came to New York, when she was 16, and I was the director at Marc Jacobs, so it’s an ironic sort of full-circle moment for us, that Marc’s hosting it. She came in for a casting and we took her for the show, and she was the same exact person then as she is now.”

In the car, bracing themselves for flashbulb impact before braving the carpet, they’d discussed “absolutely nothing about fashion,” he said. “Just what have we been up to, what are we doing, where are we going afterwards” (to Mr. Jacobs’ party at Monkey Bar and then to knitwear heiress Margherita Missoni’s bash at 1Oak).

Soft-spoken Michelle Obama clothier Jason Wu, meanwhile, making his Met debut after exploding from obscurity into household-name-dom in the past year, described how he went about getting a date with Jessica Alba. “We met each other last year, we were at a photo shoot. It was really great,” he said. “So when it came to the Met, I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to ask Jessica.’ We’d seen each other a couple more times, and when it came to this event, I thought, ‘Well, Jessica would be the perfect muse.’ She’s really down to earth. These things can be daunting at times.”

Hey! There was Cheryl Tiegs, wearing a blue sequined, actually floor-grazing vintage Norman Norrell. “When I was starting out, nobody really knew who models were or what they were doing or whatever; they certainly didn’t know my name,” she said. “Today, I think girls are much more recognizable, and that puts more pressure on them. They get more money, it’s a bigger production. But there is no right or wrong, good or bad. When I started out, it was simpler.”

Nonetheless: “It was a thrill,” Ms. Tiegs sighed. “I love my Vogue covers. They’re some of my favorites.” 

At Diane von Furstenberg’s afternoon show on Sunday, Feb. 15, the front-row guests simply would not settle down—but perhaps everyone was simply thrilled they didn’t have to put their sad faces on in sympathy for the economy. “We need this!” said Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn, glancing around the tent at Bryant Park. “We need people feeling ‘up’ this week! People were speculating that it was going to be, oh, you know, down and recalibrated to be like the economy. But that makes it sound as if we’re all supposed to don this monastic attire and lead a nun’s existence, and, like, why? This is fashion.”

And Fashion Week, necessarily about seeing and being seen, was still delivering. At Ms. von Furstenberg’s show, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Rose, both dressed in two-piece black-and-white suits, seemed amused by the commotion. Two seats away, Diana Ross’ big hair was being lit up by the dozen or so camera flashes. Ms. Furstenberg’s husband, IAC chairman Barry Diller, strolled in and gave Ms. Ross a hug and Ms. Sawyer a kiss on the forehead, and waved at model Natalia Vodianova’s two flaxen-haired children seated directly across from him. Meanwhile, French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, stylist Rachel Zoe, actress Julia Stiles and model Heidi Klum were still filtering in and doing rounds of mandatory hellos. It was just like old times!

It’s likely that everyone was breathing a collective sigh of relief; after all, the prognosis had been grim in the days and months leading up to this edition of Fashion Week. The fashion dailies and blogs assured us that the shows would be subdued. Celebrities wouldn’t come. The clothing would be basic, safe, boring. (And McDonald’s coffee would be served in the tents! What a comedown!)

Instead, as Ms. von Furstenberg’s was, many of the designs sent down the runway were imaginative, colorful, precise and inspired. It’s true that the celebrity factor was downscaled. But the ones who came were, for a change, actual fans of the designers they came to support—not C-listers on the prowl for free press (or shwag—the number of gifting suites and gift bags stuffed with hair products and nail files was noticeably down). Not to mention that those McDonald’s lattes and cappuccinos that the Transom spotted Vogue’s Hamish Bowles standing in line for on Monday morning were surprisingly tasty!

On Thursday, Feb. 12, the day before the tents at Bryant Park officially opened, Bergdorf Goodman fashion director Linda Fargo was already feeling giddy as she skimmed her color-coded, plastic-sleeve-encased fashion week schedule. 

“Already today, we’ve snagged—well, I’m not going to tell you who or what—but we’ve already snagged someone very, very young, someone we’re very excited about,” she told the Transom at a private dinner thrown by Fashion Week Daily at La Goulue.

The youth were back! The young designers, whom everyone had predicted would be the first to flop, have exceeded expectations; they ignored advice to go “simple” and instead went with their gut—the economy be damned.

Jason Wu, the 26-year-old designer whose profile exploded after Michelle Obama wore his one-shouldered white dress to the inaugural balls, was one of the first to impress with his floor-sweeping midnight blue and ivory chiffon gowns on Friday, Feb. 13. (Rumor had it that Anna Wintour displayed a slight yet distinct smile in the front row.) The Egyptian-inspired jewelry was designed by CFDA accessory design winner Philip Crangi.

“It’s got this feeling of exuberance and glamour, but with a dark edge to it,” said Mr. Crangi of the heavy sun-ray necklaces. “And in scale, we wanted to make things bigger.”

After the first round of shows that day, Roberto Cavalli hosted a party at his Madison Avenue store for the release of Fighters and Flowers, a fashion photography book that he collaborated on with Vanity Fair fashion and style director Michael Roberts.

“Fashion is fashion,” Mr. Roberts told the Transom. “If there’s a slight tremor of a recession, it’s secondary because what’s most important to fashion people is the fashion world.”

Nearby, Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, who had just arrived from the Rag & Bone show, was talking about cats with Mr. Cavalli—they both own several.

Elise Overland's presentation on Valentine's Day was not exactly a presentation in the traditional sense. The models, wearing mini dresses, leather gloves and colorful lambskin blazers, spent time standing on a platform, but also took three walks down a runway throughout the course of the hour and a half "presentation." 

Ms. Overland had warned us that it wasn't going to be a typical presentation.

"I hate to say that my show is a presentation because that has such a feeling of stagnant models standing on boxes. It’s more of an event," she told us at the Fashion Week Daily dinner, two days prior to her show. "It will be three mini shows and the lights and the music will keep changing, so it will be a whole experience. And of course, a full open bar."

Some of the models were wearing crowns and oversized necklaces by the late artist Alexander Calder, which had been supplied by his grandson Alexander Rower. 

"We literally got the jewelry like 10 minutes ago and tried to figure out who’s going to wear the crowns and who’s not," said Ms. Overland.

This was not the first time the Daily Transom had seen crowns on the runway; Jason Wu had sent out models in crown-like hair pieces the previous day for his fall collection.

"I love crowns because if it’s the right collection, it looks very majestic and tribal," said Ms. Overland. "It gives more of an attitude. It’s sort of bad-ass and that’s how I wanted these girls to be. The sophisticated rock & roll badass, princesses."

Since Ms. Overland combined the elements of a runway and presentation for her fall '09 collection, we wondered which style of Fashion Week shows some of her guests preferred. The presentation in which you can come and go as you please, have a cocktail, and socialize? Or the carefully orchestrated runway show that requires everyone to remain in their seats for at least the 15 minutes it takes to show the clothes?

"I actually really love shows," said jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia. "The high energy, the ceremonious peeling off of the plastic off the runway. I love moments--the lights going up, and the music going really loud. All that."

Meanwhile, Fabiola Beracasa, who had just attended the much-talked about Alexander Wang show earlier that day, was torn. (Mr. Wang's show at Roseland Ballroom on Saturday had pre-show tequila cocktails for the guests and take-out from Hooters backstage; Sarah Jessica Parker sat in the front row.)

"It was amazing. His collections are just getting better and better, and more wearable," she said. "I prefer presentations because of the music and the fun of it and the vibe. But today, Alex Wang was just amazing. It was a party, but also a show with like a DJ and tequila!"

Ambitious twenty- and thirty-somethings in New York working in creative fields are living with their parents instead of getting a place of their own, reports Page Six Magazine. The magazine cites the celebrity examples of socialites Fabiola Beracasa, 32, and Charlotte Ronson, 31, who just this year left their respective parents' lush residences--socialite Veronica Hearst's on the Upper East Side and Ann Dexter-Jones's duplex in the West Village.

But since Ms. Ronson, a successful designer, and Ms. Beracasa, creative director of the jewelry company Circa, have in fact taken steps to establish their domestic independence, they seem to contradict the magazine's argument that this sort of thing is on the rise. Instead the two ladies may be examples of trends more having to do with who they are--nouveau socialites--than their age group. 

Old money families in New York tend to follow the Old World order of things--prestigious schooling, followed by coming out balls, followed by dedicated charity work, followed by marriage to a hedge fund manager or an investment banker. The first residence for which a real twentysomething socialite will likely leave her parents' home may very well be her (first) husband's, typically a few Upper East Side blocks away.

After all, if they did choose to move out in their early twenties, their parents would likely be paying the rent anyway, since these young women used to not have careers or incomes of their own. But today, young society women like Ms. Beracasa and Ms. Ronson pursue hobby-like careers (and incomes)--Lydia Hearst models, Zani Gugelmann makes jewelry, Dylan Lauren does candy, Arden Wohl is a filmmaker, and list goes on. And then there's Olivia Palermo, who as a (rejected) newcomer on the high society scene seemed to understand all of this better than anyone.

A few months ago, Ms. Palermo moved out of her parents' home into a Tribeca apartment, gave a tour of the place to Page Six Magazine, hired PR representation, announced she'd like to be an actress, and landed a role (playing herself) on The City. 

“I don’t have to work—my parents have always supported me in everything I’ve wanted to do—but I want to," she said. "I want to be an actress and a brand, and then I want to do some producing.”

Among young socialites, Ms. Palermo's route is becoming an all the more common one. And Ms. Ronson's or Ms. Beracasa's leaving the comfort of their family's homes is simply a nod to their income-producing careers. 

"I hope you brought tissues," said Brooke Geahan, whose Accompanied Literary Society hosted a screening of Stephen Daldry's The Reader at the Tribeca Grand on Monday, Nov. 24. "It's a crier!"

Mr. Daldry's film is an adaptation of German writer Bernhard Schlink's bestselling novel starring Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, and 18-year-old David Kross. The story focuses on an underage boy's brief affair with an older woman, who he re-encounters years later when she is tried for crimes committed while serving as an SS guard during WWII.

The Transom does not cry, but we noticed that a significant portion of the audience had, in fact, been moved to tears by the film's end. Post-catharsis, the small crowd moved upstairs to dinner, where Ms. Geahan encouraged attendees to "get literary with a little bit of glamour" (a new motto, perhaps?).

We quickly noticed Harvey Weinstein, who was making the rounds in between Blackberry dispatches. "Aren't there smart people you can talk to? I'm going to take you over to someone smarter," he said, leading us across the bar.

We suggested that he might also be smart.

"I'm not smart."

Rather than debate that point, we asked him how he had enjoyed the screening.

"It's my movie. I'm buying it. I love it," he said, depositing us next to Mr. Daldry, the director.

We asked Mr. Daldry how he felt the screening had gone.

"Good. We've only just finished the film, so it's a whole new experience... We're just showing it for the first time so, it's very interesting hearing peoples' reactions to it."

We wondered if he'd noticed all the crying, which seemed to indicate a pretty strong reaction.

"Well, good, I would say! I never know what to expect when people watch the stuff I make, so I'm always really interested to see whether it has an emotional relationship to other people or whether it's just me. Particularly a complicated, ambiguous story full of moral questioning that's hard to fathom. It's not a regular movie--it's a very strange story. It's just such a strange character."

We also asked him what he made of the potential Winslet vs. Winslet Oscar battle (she is also starring in the upcoming Sam Mendes-helmed Revolutionary Road).

"I hope that doesn't happen, but who knows. I mean, Kate's a wonderful actress. I think she's great in this, and she's great to work with. Awards are, you know...Awards are awards. You have to take them with a little pinch of salt."

Also present was the writer Francine Prose, who told us she had "enormous respect for them for doing this film at a point in history when Americans seem to want films about vampires, so it seemed courageous to be doing this now."

Later, Ms. Geahan thanked Mr. Weinstein (who eventually got up to take a call and never returned) for "making films I want to watch."

"He was the one who actually handed me The Reader," she explained. "He said, ‘You haven't read this?' and I read it and thought, ‘How have I not read this?' Literature, charity, morality, that's what we're all about, my nonprofit. But above that, I have to thank the beauty that we have in all of us today. We have so many great writers and authors and people who really believe in literature."

Included in that group were social people Fabiola Baracasa, who was proud she had called the film's final twist (we had not), and Emma Snowden-Jones, who, we learned, maintains a poetry collection on her Blackberry.

While Allison Sarofim's annual Halloween party took place the weekend before Halloween, most people celebrated on the actual day since this year it fell on Friday--and there were plenty of masquerades and balls for New York's socials to attend. Some stopped by the several parties going on around town, while others camped out and grazed on bottle service at one location. Here's the Daily Transom's roundup of who went where, as what, and with whom, based on some careful perusal of the Patrick McMullan website. 

The biggest socialite turn-out seemed to be at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where the bar's creative director Nur Khan and One Management modeling agency president Scott Lipps threw a Halloween party hosted by Jeremy Piven and model Jessica Hart. The costumes trended to the traditional, with Fabiola Beracasa and Genevieve Jones dressed as nurses, Alex Kramer as a school girl, Julia Restoin Roitfeld as a sexy maid, and Russian designer and gallerist Dasha Zhukova as a sailor.

Heidi Klum's Halloween Party at 1 Oak was attended by Christian Siriano as Cruella Deville (and his boyfriend, photographer Brad Walsh, as a dalmatian), singer Pink as a clown, and Ms. Klum as some of sort of a blue Indian goddess with many hands. 

Accompanied Literary Society founder Brooke Geahan hosted a party at Bagatelle in the Meatpacking District, showcasing an Edgar Allen Poe verse, Lady Irene, that had not been viewed since 1830. Josh Lucas, dressed as the futuristic Mr. Poe, did an official reading of the poem. Mary-Kate Olsen stopped by dressed as a fairy in a long white dress and glittery make-up; she sat around with socialite Arden Wohl, who was holding a retro cigarette holder, and actor Leo Fitzpatrick. Also, David Schwimmer made an appearance dressed as himself, as did Emma Snowden Jones. 

Freeman's restaurant owner Taavo Somer, Earnest Sewn's Carlos Quirarte, DJ Matt Creed, and artist/DJ Matt Kliegman hosted a "Day of the Dead" party at a warehouse space off Cortlandt Alley attended by designer Rogan Gregory dressed as Jesus Christ, Charlotte Ronson as a Hooters girl, and downtown "it" thing Cory Kennedy  as Thing 2. Ms. Olsen also stopped by with Mr. Fitzpatrick after the Accompanied Literary Society party.

In an age where Damien Hirst errata have joined gold and United States government bonds in the shrinking pantheon of safe investments, can contemporary art still be dangerous?

More to the point, can contemporary art be dangerous when it's held in something of a polyurethane uterus, a haute-culture billboard designed by deconstructivist goddess Zaha Hadid, deposited on Rumsey Playfield in Central Park (after stints in Hong Kong and Tokyo), and paid for by Chanel—in these hard times is Lagerfeld really the Teutonic Karl we need?—whose iconic quilted handbag the melting plastic womb is said, implausibly, to resemble?

In a word, yes, if the traumas suffered by the Daily Transom at last night's opening party for the so-called CHANEL Contemporary Art Container—styled "Mobile Art"—are any indication.

Dangerous indeed: Oh, how nasty and brutish existence on the red carpet! And short, too. One moment, you're admiring Padma Lakshmi as she removes, on the coldest night of the season so far, a leather-and-cashmere simulacrum of an overcoat to pose in pitch-black and skin-tight Chanel—that "what are you wearing" icebreaker would be more aggressively superfluous than usual this evening. The next, a biting gust comes out of the northeast, snapping off a cadet branch of an American elm (Ulmus Americana)—a significant branch, 10 inches long, perhaps a quarter-inch in diameter—and sending it hurtling through the air, past your temple and toward your scribbling right hand; as your pen's life flashes before your eyes (it was a gloriously smooth Pilot rollerball), the grenade hits with all the crystalline immediacy of Ms. Hadid's tragically unrealized 1994 design for the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales, say, or Mr. Lagerfeld's cosmically unreal fall couture show held this past June in Paris' Grand Palais. Ouch!

Thus grotesquely drenched in ink and blood—prissily "embedded" war correspondents take note—the Daily Transom happily happened upon a way to turn misfortune into, if not fortune, then at least less misery. (The ink was seeping into the wound at this point, and—thanks to the uncommon success of the Central Park Conservancy—there was, in the ominous canopy above, plenty more where that came from.) Which is to say, the publicity folks let the D.T. into the party to fix himself over at what's probably called "Mobile Loo"—and so, freed from the media hordes, he basted in the glow of the flawlessly wonderful, and well-mannered and -born, third-tier celebrities who would have arrived by 7:30, and, of course, the spaceship.

"If devoting so much intellectual effort," Nicolai Ouroussoff chastised Tuesday morning in The Times, "to such a dubious undertaking might have seemed indulgent a year ago, today it looks delusional." Fine, point taken, but surely it must be something that Chanel has executed the first building in New York that looks like the baby, and hums like the infrastructure, from Eraserhead. (And really, the usually marvelous Mr. Ouroussoff should know better than to extol Fredrick Law Olmstead's "social mixing"—this, after all, was the man who wanted to replace Harlem's egalitarian street grid with a bourgeois enclave of winding lanes and pastoral cul-de-sacs.)

All the early partiers seemed to be referring to Ms. Hadid's creation as "the tent."

Some 20 minutes of aesthetic epilepsy later, not much had changed in Arrivals. Ms. Lakshmi, current host of Bravo's Top Chef and now-estranged age-inappropriate wife of insipid singer-songwriter Salman Rushdie, had been replaced by Katie Lee Joel, former host of Bravo's Top Chef and not-yet-estranged age-inappropriate wife of fatwa'd post-colonial novelist Billy Joel.

Ms. Joel ratified the occasion. "I don't think everyone should stop what they're doing just because [of the economy.] This is art."

In any case: "I didn't grow up with a lot of money; I make mostly poor food. I'm from West Virginia. We grew up eating the same food all time."

Ms. Joel recent met Barack Obama at a fund-raising concert co-headlined by her husband. "He's so exhausted by campaigning—the one thing I'd serve him is comfort food." Current polls find Mr. Obama still some six points down in West Virginia, but closing.

Helena Christensen appeared, wearing a tiara that had melted into a headband. She twirled and strutted and smoldered to a chorus of "this way!" and "over-the-shoulder" and "I need a two-shot"; when a publicity orderly tried to herd her toward an odd camera—from CNN it appeared—that took moving pictures, she turned suddenly stern. "This is fine, I'm not speaking tonight."

Fabiola Beracasa was more playful, perhaps a function of the fact that she was among the few women here with the good sense to wear pants, even if they were silk. (Also, a diaphanous feather wrap which was unceremoniously handed to an available member of the media every time an on-camera interview was required.) Another was Fran Lebowitz—her trousers were rather thicker—who said the best compliment one could give her is, "You don't look that tired."

Ms. Beracasa too expressed empathy—or rather, sympathy—for the state of the economy. After all, slander about socialite idleness aside, this could have conceivably been called a business dinner for her; that is, she once spent a teenage summer interning for Mr. Lagerfeld at Chanel HQ.

Irina Aleksander called around to find out the costumes prominent New Yorkers are wearing this Halloween. Celerie Kemble's going to need a lot of hairspray!

Ms. Aleksander also moseyed down to Diane von Furstenberg's meatpacking district store, where the fashion empress was throwing a party for Paper mag's Kim Hastreiter's new book about Geoffrey Beene.

And Spencer Morgan rang his old friend Chris Wilson to find out the real story behind his scandalous tale of sexual deviancy on board an American Airlines flight. It's, uh, not what you think!

“I have zero investments, for better or for worse,” said 26-year-old Ben Zoltowski, a senior print project manager at the advertising agency McCann Erickson. “I feel like New York is already difficult enough to live in financially! I’m used to living paycheck to paycheck and living frugally, because we sort of have to. Most of us have to!”

Mr. Zoltowski, who lives in Williamsburg, went to Ithaca College and graduated in 2003; he moved to New York in July 2006. Like most of his peers, he seems to think that things can’t really get any worse, because he’s already living hand-to-mouth! But it probably hasn’t dawned on him that he might not even be able to afford last call at Greenpoint Tavern when all this shakes out.

Mr. Zoltowski is a Crash Virgin, experiencing his first real New York economic downturn. “To be perfectly honest, it all feels pretty distant to me, Wall Street and all that,” he said. “It feels like a different city to me. One thing I did think about is, I work in advertising, and businesses hire us to represent their products. So if Wall Street is crashing and the economy is going down the drain, who has the money to buy these products? Therefore, what client has money to hire an agency, and therefore, what agency has money to pay me?”

Those aren’t horrible questions to be asking. In the last downturn, which started in March 2000, when the Dow plunged nearly 375 points in one day and the Nasdaq—where most overvalued Internet companies were listed—began a free fall, workers in industries far from Wall Street, particularly technology and media, found themselves scrambling for jobs.

Many people will point to 9/11 as the kickoff of New York’s last recession, but really, by the time the planes hit the twin towers, the city’s economy was already limping; the events of 9/11 just accelerated a decline that had been set in motion months prior. Hiring in the creative industries came to a standstill; when the poor saps who graduated college in 2002—the first class since 9/11—made their expected migration to New York that June, they were greeted with the ugly reality that there were few desirable jobs to be had. One member of the class of 2002, who today lives in New York, moved home to Massachusetts and worked for a year as a teacher’s aide at an elementary school; another took a job making sandwiches at a gourmet shop in Brooklyn. Others bartended or took unpaid internships, intent on waiting out the downturn. The economic trough, combined with finding one’s footing in a city literally covered in ashes, ended up branding those who lived in New York from 2000 to, say, 2003 with the distinction of having endured something momentous and come out the other end intact. It was in fact startling to see, when the sky finally brightened a bit and you took a look around, how many of your peers had hung on and stayed, and made it.  Now, over the past week, some of today’s Crash Virgins are becoming mindful of living through An Official Historical Event.

“I did feel like something important was happening, and it happens so seldom where an event will break through the shouting headlines and the 30-second clips,” said John Fischer, a 26-year-old strategist at “predictive marketing” firm Infinia Foresight. (Note to Mr. Fischer: Predictive marketing firms are usually bad at predicting economic collapse.) “It was exciting—but not in a good way.”

“I was on the subway the other day, and there was a guy reading the Financial Times, and people sort of struck up a conversation about how they’re worried about not knowing exactly what’s going on,” said a 25-year-old who works in the art world. “It was two guys in suits who both looked like they worked in finance. One was reading the Financial Times and the other just sort of leaned over and said, ‘If you’re reading that, you’re probably keeping up with the news, and I don’t know if you know, but 10 minutes ago …’ And then he said some news about A.I.G. that I don’t remember. They were sitting next to me, so I just sort of overheard, but it’s something that’s pretty uncommon on the New York City subway.”

Lizzy Goodman was one of the fortunate ones of the class of 2002; upon graduating from Penn, she had a job lined up as an assistant teacher at Buckley, the all-boys school on the Upper East Side. Six years later, she’s an editor at large at Blender. Like some of her peers, she seems hopeful that, instead of being a harbinger of utter doom, this crash will instead level the playing field just a little bit.

“I don’t think anyone is hoping for American financial collapse just so that the Bowery can be seedy again,” said Ms. Goodman, who lives in the West Village. “But on the other hand, if in the wake of this collective shuttering and fearing comes a return to old school ’80s boho New York, I would certainly be in favor of that.”

The disconnect between the New York of legend and the reality of living here has perhaps never been starker. “I know a lot of people who moved to New York for something that isn’t in New York right now,” said Mr. Fischer, the marketing strategist. “There is a sense that things are in transition. I think there’s a big question of how this will change the social and cultural landscape of New York in the next two or three years. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s excitement—but it’s apprehension that something is definitely happening.”

Of course, that’s a story that’s been years in the making; the disappearance of Lehman Brothers and the conversion of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into bank holding companies—as recently as last year thought to be a sacrilege—isn’t going to make $4,000 a month one-bedrooms on the Lower East Side any cheaper. (Or if it does, they’ll go to $3,500 a month, not $1,500.) The days when a photographer could buy an abandoned bank building on the Bowery for $102,000—as the photographer Jay Maisel did in 1966—are over; they are not coming back. (See also: the Playpen, smoking in bars, liquid lunches, Passerby, subway tokens, the Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue and 21st St., et cetera, not to mention the Algonquin Round Table, the Automat, Spy magazine, Warhol’s Factory, and the Palladium. Also: typewriters.) Some Wall Street types may flee; a few Wharton grads might move to Boston or San Francisco. But it seems highly unlikely that the crash will herald in some utopian new era of “creativity” or allow artists to colonize Soho, or even the East Village, again. It’s over! You missed it! Even Rent has closed! Besides, the Russians are here now.

Sep. 17, 2008

The Best-Dressed at
the New Yorkers
for Children Benefit

On Tuesday, Sept. 16, the post-work crowd on 42nd Street was treated to a procession of coquettish cocktail dresses and floor-sweeping evening gowns worn by Manhattan's uptown set as they exited their chauffeured cars--or pedicabs as we saw in the case of one unfortunate couple--into Cipriani's for the annual New Yorkers for Children gala. While some opted for the eye-catching tiered gowns like Julie Macklowe, portfolio manager for Sigma Capital Management and wife of William Macklowe, president Macklowe Properties, who arrived in a voluminous blue dress. Others, like Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, went for the simple sparkly black mini, T-shirt and blazer.

We've selected our 10 favorite looks from the gala; click the slideshow above to take a look.