Garo Sparo (right)

The Observer stood in the middle of a first-floor studio tucked into what may be the last ratty stretch of Avenue B, eyes closed and arms held aloft, and ducked into a leather chrysalis.

We were being fitted for a “man-corset,” an anachronistic emblem of female oppression that once gripped only courtly ladies but now in New York can outfit any gender.

Our shit was about to get tight.

For lovers of corsetry, this small atelier is a sort of mecca: Amanda Lepore and Daphne Guinness are among the regular devotees. The exact address of the place is unlisted, but it isn’t to hard to find, as the window is washed in silver glitter. This is the domain of Garo Sparo.

Hadn’t you heard? The corset is back in style. Alexander McQueen’s medieval-themed masterpieces drew record numbers to the Met, the blogs are crawling with “steam punks,” and Spanx and competing shapewear have us locked in their formfitting grip.
In short, corsets are having a moment, and soon Mr. Sparo will be having one too. On Sept. 9, the Sundance Channel will premiere Unleashed by Garo, a couture-centric reality show that may turn the city’s go-to corsetier into a star. “This is where it all happens!” Mr. Sparo exclaimed, gesturing around the studio-cum-funhouse littered with gem-studded statues, enormous books of Victorian palacewear and newspaper clippings of women and men he had dressed.

The corset king glided though the room in tan sandals, his facial hair groomed into sideburns, all the while fondling a red string. At tables lined against the art-spangled walls young assistants cut fabric, or sat at sewing machines running garments under the needles. Mannequins in corsets peered out over us, and other examples of the designer’s rib-rattling pièce-de-résistance hung innocuously on racks. Brass band music played on a stereo, and Noah Klein, Mr. Sparo’s studio manager and on-screen sidekick, twirled his pencil-thin mustache in time with the tuba.

It’s no surprise the scene appealed to television producers.

“It looks beautiful on camera,” said Sarah Barnett, who runs Sundance Channel’s day-to-day as its executive vice president. “It’s this colorful treasure trove, an Aladdin’s cave of dream-making.”

The studio’s been in the neighborhood since the mid-’90s—when the area was a good deal seedier—but Mr. Sparo’s been designing since long before that. The corsetier grew up on Long Island, the son of immigrant parents, with four brothers and a house that never lacked a place to sew.

“I was the only child allowed in the sewing room, because it was my passion,” he said. “I was the only one who cared about clothes, etc. I started sewing at a very young age—5, 6 years old. It’s in my family. They are immigrants to this country, they worked in factories. They did lace-making, hand-beading, all sorts of things.”

He moved down south for college, where he parlayed his involvement in the “rinky-dink” fashion scene at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro into a sponsorship from Absolut to design high-end looks for a charity benefit they were putting on in New York. That was 1995. Mr. Sparo got involved in the club world, spending long glorious nights at Limelight, Jackie 60 and Click+Drag.

“It was the budding rave scene, and what was really big then were hats: mad hatter hats, jughead hats, crowns,” he said. “So I would start wearing them to clubs, and then people would start wanting them. The clubs would let them put a little shop in there. And then I started making the clothes.”

The attention led to expansion in 33 cities and eventually boutiques on Avenue B and St. Marks Place. Mr. Sparo weathered 9/11 by branching into bridal wear—“People weren’t buying clothes, but they were still getting married!”—and once the market came back, he began attracting high-profile clients. Amanda Lepore gets all her corsetry from Garo, and Ms. Guinness named him one of her favorite designers, alongside Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh. Mr. Sparo refers to the beer heiress and mistress to Bernard Henri-Levy as “my muse of the moment.”

(A representative for Ms. Guinness informed us that the muse would not be able to respond to our request for comment.)

We asked about Mr. Sparo’s experience with perhaps fashion’s ultimate muse, Lady Gaga.

“I designed a dress for one of her music videos,” one of Mr. Sparo’s baby-faced assistants sighed. His hair was cut into a hacked-at Mohawk, and his T-shirt bore the anarchist circle-A symbol. “She returned it totally destroyed. And she didn’t pay for it.”

Despite that experience, Mr. Sparo said he considered the pop superstar an inspiration, along with Yoko Ono. He also has a wish list of those he’d like to dress, which includes Grace Jones, Kate Pierson of the B-52’s and Nicki Minaj.

If Unleashed by Garo proves to be a hit, those icons may be stomping down to Alphabet City any day. The show came about after an assistant became convinced that the combination of manic energy, fierce devotion to clients and mastery of corset-making would be irresistible on TV. Ms. Barnett agreed, calling the show a “special creative twist on fashion programming.”

The clips from the first few episodes, viewable online, are promising. Mr. Sparo has charisma in spades, not to mention the catchiness of that name. Amid a seeming glut of makeover reality shows, a refined specialist like Mr. Sparo may just manage to stand out. Sample episode title: “Can I Pull You a Little Tighter?”

Which brings us back to the designer’s original challenge—he had a male corset, and he wanted to get us into it.

“Just duck right in here,” Mr. Sparo said, holding up a black harness.

“You’re not really doing this correctly unless you break a rib, right?” we asked as the corset slid onto our torso.

“No, these corsets are comfortable!” Mr. Sparo said, lacing up the bottom rungs with a sudden tug. “In fact, when you take out the mutilation, the corset is empowering to women. It gives them more confidence.”

At the moment, we were confident that our abdomen was about to collapse, that the saddle-thick hide of the corset would wedge further into us with each fastening of the shoelacelike web on the back. Still, Mr. Sparo kept ratcheting up the snugness.

“You want it tighter?” he asked.

“Um, sure,” we responded.

He yanked the cord and the leather dug deeper.

“Tighter?”

“Sure.”

Yank!

“Tighter again?”

“Sure!” We exhaled.

Yaaaank!

And then, with the corset fully strapped on, we approached the studio’s giant mirror. Look at that—we couldn’t really move, but damn if we didn’t look a good five pounds slimmer!

“You see,” Mr. Sparo said, in a thrilling voice befitting a TV star. “The corset will never go out of style.”

Mr. Scanlan mentioned that it was Mr. Beresford's 70th birthday, which drew gasps and a burst of applause from the audience. Many of his friends and much of the cast of the film he's currently working on, Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding, turned out to fete Mr. Beresford. The Transom spotted child actor Nat Wolff, CNN correspondent Alina Cho, Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford and Catherine Keener, who appeared from the state of her hair to have gotten caught in the sudden rainstorm outside. (She still looked great.)

The role in Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding that has everyone talking, however, belongs to Jane Fonda: She plays a Woodstock-dwelling flower child now embarking on grandmotherhood. We suggested delicately that perhaps the role had given Ms. Fonda a chance to get back in touch with her hippie roots; she, of course, was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. "My what roots?" she asked, holding her remarkably well-behaved little dog in her arms. "Stoned hippie grandma?" Ms. Fonda insisted that she has little in common with the character, really. "I've never played a character like this before, and I never was like this character! Protests, yes, but not like her. She's very colorful!"

We asked about the funny, strange Scissors Sisters comedy video released earlier this month, in which Ms. Fonda appears along with Amanda Lepore, Kylie Minogue and Juliette Lewis. She explained she's a friend of the band. "And I went to the concert when I was in Paris. Un-friggin'-believable. Unbelievable. [Jake Shears] ended up almost naked, I might add. It was great."

Kyle MacLachlan had also been to Paris lately. "I did one trip to Paris, which is my wife's favorite city, and I love it, too," he told the Transom. "We happened to hit it right at the height of a heat wave, which is difficult-but we enjoyed that very much, took our son with us." Now that Desperate Housewives has wrapped up, Mr. MacLachlan has again been flexing his indie muscles. "I worked on a little thing for the Independent Film Channel with Fred Armisen called Portlandia a couple of months ago. That's been picked up, it's going to come out and that will be kind of fun." We looked it up-it is co-written by Carrie Brownstein of the indie rock band Sleater-Kinney.

The man of the evening, Mr. Beresford, admitted to the Transom that he knew "virtually nothing" about ballet when he set out to direct Mao's Last Dancer. "I'd directed a number of operas, but I didn't really know anything about ballet! But then I've done a lot of films where I never knew anything about the subject. You know, you've got to research it," he said. But he didn't try out any steps himself: "None whatever! You know, you've got to be so fit, and it's one of the most rigorous things you can possibly do. To learn to be a great ballet dancer is years and years of training, you know, from childhood. Very tough."

We also inquired as to whether Mr. Beresford had rented any of the classic ballet movies-like The Red Shoes (yes) or Center Stage. "Oh yeah, Center Stage, I saw that one, yeah," he allowed. "There are a lot of 'em!"

"Here's my quote," Ms. Poehler said. The night before she had bid farewell to Saturday Night Live during her Weekend Update segment. "It's a feel good story--it's the feel good existential one man show of the year."

We spoke about Smart Girls, her Web show with Amy Miles that celebrates "girls who are changing the world by being themselves."

"Amy's in that too!" Ms. Poehler said, swinging to the side introduce Ms. Miles, who had one arm in a sling. She waved at us with the other.

"We're so thrilled it's out there and people are watching it," Ms. Miles said, smiling. "We're excited that we put something out there that is like something I would have wanted to see at that age. And we're representing girls that we kind of were because you don't really ever see that."

"Just normal girls, just regular girls," Ms. Poehler said, shaking her head.

We asked if she wanted to tell us anything about SNL.

"No, no..." she said, laughing. "No, I'm just psyched to be here and this is a really cool trippy show and Michael is a good friend of mine, and is a transformative preformer and so I was happy to be even included. Look, if anybody asks you to do something with Debbie Harry, say yes. My 14-year-old version of myself can't believe that I got to meet Debbie Harry."

Here’s the e-mail we just received from Michael T. announcing Motherfucker's demise:

Out of The Daily Transom mailbag yesterday came an extra special invitation. Like a pair of beacons on a foggy horizon, all pink and precious, was the announcement of Amanda Lepore’s birthday party, which will be held at Star Lounge tonight. Then we realized that the fog wasn’t fog at all—it was déjà vu! Ms. Lepore, the transgender fashion icon made famous as the face of fashion label Heatherette and MAC cosmetics, has already had at least one birthday party. Well, according to Michael Musto anyway. The Village Voice writer’s column this week dives feet-first into Ms. Lepore’s Lotus libations, where the fuzzy scribe was kicked out by a beefy security guy. Maybe Mr. Musto’s exile has turned Ms. Lepore into a Paris-Hilton-on-New-Year’s or a Patrick-McMullan-after-publishing-a-book type. Then again, perhaps the evening’s sponsors and the birthday girl just dig publicity.

The Pud-Pounder: Doug Dechert, who's currently working at pimping out Page Sixer Richard Johnson's artist son, celebrated his 49th birthday this weekend. Is he still pissed off about a betrayal by his old teenage lover, Abigail Vona, and her pals like Jay McInerney? Oh hell yes. But how was the party? "I think it's a very nice event; it's a lovely crowd of people, and I wish Doug the best. But I would imagine this would be the same scene at his funeral," said a friend of the birthday boy.

Next Fashion Week: September 8, 2006: Fashion week may be over--but so is Hilary Duff. Plus! Anna Wintour admits to fashion mistakes.

Ladies' Rankings: Of the 62 hottest it-girls in Manhattan, who won the celebutante contest that is fashion week?