Last night's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Benefit will probably be--in the long run--lost to the annals of time, indistinguishable from last years, or the years before, or any year since Anna Wintour took over, actually. But for us who were there on the sidelines, waving frantically at a very pregnant Kim Kardashian and an actively dismissive Kanye West, screaming for just a moment of Lena Dunham or Kate Beckinsale time while pressed up against the barriers of the press pen like poor animals on the way to the slaughterhouse, listening to the woman next to us ask every female celebrity the same questions--"Did you eat anything today? What did you eat? How long did it take you to get into the dress?"--the irony of the night's theme was not lost on us.

"Punk: From Chaos to Couture" was already going to be a difficult concept for designers, celebrities, and various rich people to wrap their head around. For one thing, it implies that punk--as a movement, as a musical genre--ever evolved out chaos into some sort of couture maturity. Even The New York Times got it twisted: David Byrne and Debbie Harry, while being two great artists, were never 'punk.' Debbie Harry was more punk than most, you could say she lived like a punk, or dressed like a punk, but her voice was always too clear, too lilting, never "Fuck you"-enough to be considered part of the movement.

This sort of mass confusion was amusedly referenced to more than once in the evening. Bee Shaffer, daughter of Anna Wintour, showed up in a giant Dior couture ballgown, shrugging off questions of fitting the night's theme by saying that she was always more of a girly girl. Jerry Seinfeld asked Jimmy Fallon, in what we generously assumed was a joke (as these men were both wearing designer tuxedos): "When did punk start? The 70s? The 80s? I feel like it was the 70s..." Anna Wintour herself was wearing a pink flowered dress, because she had been told that "pink was punk."

Even the younger generation, who you'd think would have had at least  a Good Charlotte notion of what Punk looked like, had apparently seen Pink in one too many ballgowns. The weird Olsens were dressed like....something (Ashley was an orange cloud, her sister looked like a semi-goth librarian), but whatever that something was, it wasn't book.

Then again, it seemed even more offensive when they got it right. Cameron Diaz wore a blue number by Stella McCartney, whose ode to punkness was a confined to a golden belt of long spikes. Donatella Versace wore a dress made of spikes. One woman, wearing spiked Louboutins, decided that to be truly punk, she would spit on the red carpet, which was totally punk...until she delicately traipsed over it to get to her seat. The three or four who got it right (Lily Westwood, whose dress was made from recycled garbage; Greta Gerwig; Madonna;Mily Cyrus; the old women who died their hair pink) seemed ironically out of place at such a black tie ball where everyone else just wore whatever Tom Ford--who wore his usual black tux, by the way, while discussing how "punk" was a state of being--had made for them.

We're just saying: Maybe next year the theme should be something that the 1% can handle without seeming clueless or offensive. "Comic Con" perhaps?

New York fashion week has finally come to a close. Amen! For those less-fortunate editors and fashion authorities (or perhaps we are the lucky ones) that have not jetted off to London or Milan, we finally get a moment to recover.

In retrospect, we relished the young talents of Prabal Gurung and Jason Wu. The Observer will never forget the spectacle and grandeur of Alexander Wang—or the impeccable quality of Simon Spurr’s suiting. With such a busy social schedule and so many shows, it’s hard to remember all the garments we evaluated with a careful eye.

We’re still a smidgen bitter about a few mishaps with Oscar de la Renta and PR Consulting… but we forgive easily… Oscar might possibly have been the best women’s collection in town! Best of luck obtaining the financial means to swing the $15,000 price tag...

One thing we do recall in our hazy fatigue, is the undeniable fact that fur is back. Yes, yes it never really left! But honestly!

"It's so glamorous and luxe!" proclaimed Joan Rivers about fur, backstage at Dennis Basso.

Perhaps Ms. Rivers is in the right. Has there ever been so much mink, chinchilla, fox, raccoon, coyote, goat, rabbit, astrakhan, Mongolian lamb, ermine and sable shown in New York? Probably… but let’s peruse The Oberserver’s favorites— shall we?

Images: GETTY and Patrick McMullan.

An Olsen sandwich!

It was only a couple years ago that the Olsen twins were as ubiquitous as Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian combined. But time has either been fair or unfair to Mary-Kate and Ashley (depending on your view of fame vs. the relative hassle of paparazzi stalking), and as of late its their younger sister Elizabeth who has been getting all the attention for her groundbreaking performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene.

We're not saying this spotlight swivel would make New York's most infamous set of celebutante twins mad...but you know that none of their work in film has ever been called "shattering." (Despite the fact that one of the Ms. Olsens made out with Ben Kingsley in The Wackness.) So what have the twosome been doing to put their name back on their radar?

Going round the NYC party circuit, for deffies, like attending last night's cocktail party thrown by (for?) Christian Louboutin at Barney's. We must remember: these girls, like Ms. Kardashian, are entrepreneurs first...last we checked, their combined worth was in the billions (and that's not for their acting prowess). Their $39,000 alligator backpacks were flying off the shelves during Fashion Week, because who doesn't need an alligator backpack?

And apparently it was Mary-Kate, not Ashley who Saturday Night Live comedian Jason Sudeikis has been seeing lately. That makes sense: Mr. Sudeikis' last girlfriend was January Jones, another party-hopping, icy blonde. (Everyone knows MK is the crazier of the twins.) Ashley's love life is a little more speculative, but there's a chance she's trying to nab a certified geek, as evidenced by her and Mary-Kate's Halloween ad for a social-networking site featuring light sabers and storm trooper helmets. Sexy!

The Parisian artist was sitting in an empty white storage warehouse, wedged in a corner of the dirty cement floor, wallowing in the bits of clumping plaster.

“Yeah, it’s great,” The Observer responded. Asbestos was scattered about them.

A few rooms over, “Sick Atavus of the New Blood,” Mr. Pol’s second career exhibition, had lured to the gutted-out space on Washington Street editors of glossy magazines, willowy-eyed French girls in gothic, black-strapped heels and men with chunky Gallic noses. The space where the paintings were hung had been wiped clean and stuffed with hovering trays of Champagne, but the cold room, where Mr. Pol sat with The Observer, had nothing but a crude outline of the continents etched onto a discarded wall.

Mr. Pol pointed at the map of the world.

“I wanted it as a piece for the show but no, I can’t,” he said. “It’s way too heavy.”

Nothing in the exhibition, though, was as staid as the page of an atlas. His paintings were chopshops of Warhol ad copy, big colors plastered on top, blunt imagery swirled in. Dug into the canvases were big corpse boxes with corporation logos and the occasional glaring crucifix. His sculptures were overgrown headlike piñatas, their mouths gagging on tongues of Chinese dragon capes that spewed out them, pulsating gold letters jumping off the scarlet base and crawling like carpet through the room.

“Your art is bombastic,” The Observer noted.

The painter had paint stains on his grease-hued cords, a round face and Frankish overtones babying the sound of every syllable.

“It’s good that you say that,” Mr. Pol said. “You don’t need to know too much, if you know some things about what’s going on with the world, that will be enough.”

Mr. Pol’s last show attracted no less than the discerning eyes of the Olsen twins, and though Mary-Kate and Ashley skipped out this go-around, the musk of celebrity was pervasive. This had much to do with Mr. Pol’s promoter and wingman Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and his mother, Carine Roitfeld, the party fixture late of the editor’s desk at French Vogue.

With that in mind, should the artist applaud or sigh if four women want nothing more to do with their Thursday night than crash his afterparty?

“No! We’re going in,” one of the uninvited said after The Observer watched them race past fretful PRs at the Gramercy Park Hotel and into his elevator.

“He said that he’s gonna find a seat for us, so now we’re just going,” said a second. “Period, end of story.”

To their credit, the crashers lasted a good 15 minutes, and even managed to snag The Observer’s seat as he roamed around the garden terrace, overgrown bushes and ferns tumbling off the ledges.

Upstairs, Ms. Roitfeld caught the artist by the elbow and entered into a low but audible whisper.

“It was amazing!” Ms. Roitfeld said. “It’s the third one, no? I’m drunk, but I don’t think it’s the second one. And then the next one!”

By the time Mr. Pol mentioned his next choice of exhibition locale, Hong Kong, they had moved back into French. The words gelled to a blur—The Observer lacked comprehension of the tongue—and then they started repeating something that sounded like “je fume”—oh, they were indicating that you could smoke over there, in the bathrooms.

The terrace was tucked underneath a rooftop glass box and beneath that dome the guests drifted freely between courses and, as the wine set in, during them. On one side sat the de Kooning family.

“Yeah! I definitely see some abstract thing going on,” Lucy, Willem’s granddaughter, said to The Observer over a cigarette. “Like, definitely Nicolas’ work was definitely influenced by my grandfather.”

Asher Roth, the frat-rap MC responsible for “I Love College,” had come with his girlfriend, 23-year-old gin heiress Hannah Bronfman.

“I’m getting my eyes opened right now,” Mr. Roth explained. “It was violent, really violent. You gotta appreciate art of that magnitude.”

The art of that magnitude was there, in the gallery, in the hotel, and The Observer did appreciate it. He noted it in the asbestos smearing the painter’s pants, or the audacity of those walking into a party and taking a random seat. There was also magnitude in the statement The Observer heard before entering the bathroom, uttered by the French man about to exit.

“Enjoy your smoke, mate,” he said.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

But now, according to HousingWatch.com, Mr. Eichner's personal assistant has confirmed that the real estate developer currently embroiled in a bizarre foreclosure suit over a $5 million apartment he purchased at ill-fated One Madison Park, bought the 12-room West Village abode for him and his family. Full House it is!

cmalle@observer.com

According to city records, the identical-twin franchise has finally sold the oft-price-zig-zagging West Village apartment—which they never lived in—for $7.7 million, only $300,000 more than they paid for the "twelve room trophy" in 2004. Listed with Prudential Elliman's buzzed-about broker Jared Seligman, the apartment sold to a Two BB LLC.

The designer duo, whose Elizabeth & James clothing line took advantage of fashion week traffic with a pop-up shop nearby Morton Square on Horatio and Hudson, first tried listing the nearly 6,000-square-foot apartment for $11.995 million in 2007. After three brokerage swaps and a final asking price of $8.43 million, the $300,000 the twins made on the investment probably won't even cover the broker fees.

cmalle@observer.com

Late last week, in a moment that feels particular to the neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a girl in her early 20s with long, seemingly unwashed brown hair, stained denim cutoffs, scuffed boots and a loose white tank top that exposed lacy bra straps rode by on a bicycle and caught the attention of a 31-year-old man.

She belonged to the species of Dirty Girl that have been shuffling around this city for years: youthful, thrifty, indifferent to grooming-and in possession of an undeniable and confounding sex appeal.

"There are different kinds of hotness," explained her admirer, who preferred not to be named. "Sometimes you see a woman and you think, 'My God. I would do anything to take that woman out to a nice meal and see if she's crazy enough to think I'm nice and marry me someday.' And then there are times you're walking home and you step into a bar and there is this chick in the corner and I can go home and have sex with her for a weekend. And those girls radiate that."

The levels of trying and looking like you're not, so that everyone knows you actually really, really are, have an appeal, he added. "You know how in middle school you would rip your jeans, and your parents would mock you? That's kind of how I feel about them. It's like you know that that was such a curated attempt that it inherently exposes a softness in the middle, a kind of vulnerability. Like, 'You don't know who you are very well yet, but you're trying to create a facade that supports a certain thesis.'"

PHOTOS> Meet the Dirty Girls

The Dirty Girls of New York have some well-known ambassadors, commonly found in the front rows of certain fashion shows and the pages of Nylon magazine and (with their nipples showing) on Purple magazine founder Olivier Zahm's blog. They are well educated in the art of heavy eyeliner, like that smudged and smeared around Becka Diamond's eyes; of concealing your actual, sizable wealth with vintage T-shirts, like Peaches and Pixie Geldof; and of uncombed hair, like that framing the disinterested, remote look of Cory Kennedy's eyes. (All of the above are often identified as model or socialite or "It girl" or "party girl," though their actual professional pursuits are unclear.)

Ms. Kennedy appeared in ad campaigns and on the cover of Women's Wear Daily after the photographer (and her onetime boyfriend) Mark "The Cobra Snake" Hunter began posting photos of her on his Web site back in 2005. And though the look has all but disappeared from editorial pages, the photographer's Web site is still a place where the number of skinny, adolescent thighs in ripped stockings, navels exposed by dingy crop tops and various states of intoxication demonstrated by suggestive poses on the ground would make any man, young or old, feel instant guilt-if not for having looked, then for the place their imagination took them. 

"I know a lot of those girls and for some of them it's real, you know?" said Mr. Hunter by phone. "They sleep in their clothes and then go to a party and they won't shower, for real. I'm not a girl, but it must be a relief that that kind of look is acceptable because it's a lot easier to pull off than throwing pounds of makeup on and trying to make your clothes steamed and unwrinkled and stuff. I've traveled with some of them, and they just throw their shit in their suitcase and they put it on wrinkled and then they just put dry shampoo in their hair. It's a lifestyle."

Asked about the appeal of the look to the opposite sex, Mr. Hunter said, "It just gets a dirty idea in your head. Like, 'This girl is wild,' or it's just very sexual, like, 'Let's degrade this person.'"

Meanwhile, the fashion editors-who almost always take a position contrary to that of a straight man when it comes to what's sexy-see the look a different way.

"Some people equate dirtiness with soulfulness. That it makes you interesting," said Elle's fashion news director, Anne Slowey. "I don't think it's necessarily one of fashion's biggest trends, but kids of a certain age are always discovering it. But, it's like, can't someone rediscover Stephen Sprouse or Geoffrey Beene? Alex White is doing styling with Oscar de la Renta and re-creating that whole 'Upper East Side kid mimicking parents' thing, which is more interesting to me than always doing Marc's Perry Ellis collection.

"I think it works for Cory Kennedy, but there is a fine line between expression and clamoring for attention," she continued. "The minute it becomes ... who was it that used to roll around on the floor at clubs? Or like Paz de la Huerta. I've seen her pick her nose and fling it across the restaurant, and at a certain point you're just out of control."

Ms. Slowey later added on The Observer's answering machine, "Erin Wasson is like the epitome of the dirty underpants look, but even her line got cleaned up for fall." (Last month, in fact, Ms. Wasson's line for RVCA consisting of denim cutoffs and baby tees-the debut of which was marked by the model claiming, 'Homeless people have the best style'-was discontinued altogether.)

What's frustrating at this point-for someone who first glimpsed the Dirty Girl look eight years ago at N.Y.U., tried it on and ultimately abandoned it by graduation-is that it still dominates young women's idea of style. Even as the clothes on the runways have become beautiful and elegant and clean. Even as Alexander Wang has traded in his burnout tees in favor of deconstructed suits in sophisticated fabrics and pinstripes. And even as 17-year-old actress Taylor Momsen has amplified the look to an ungodly extreme, looking dirtier, cheaper and self-consciously more desperate than all the Dirty Girls before her.

But there is hope: Examine the spreads in the just-out September issues of the major fashion magazines, and you will find a refreshing precision to both the tailoring and hair-styling. "I think there's always going to be a place for that rebellious dirty look with the torn sweaters and leggings," said Katie Connor, Marie Claire's fashion features editor. "But in terms of what we're looking at on the runways, right now, it's much more a return to the classics, and what we're seeing is very ladylike-it's longer hemlines and square top-handle bags. That goes directly in the face of these young starlets in the tattered clothes."

Even Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, who arrived in the hallways of N.Y.U. practicing what became known as homeless chic, seem to be cleaning up. (The latter is Marie Claire's cover girl this month, with pink lips and a tailored jacket slung over her shoulders.)

"I look at the Olsen twins, and they've come so far in terms of when they first came to New York and started that whole wide-gaping-holes-in-your-leggings look," Ms. Connor said. "Now they're talking about how they would love to see the first lady wear The Row or Elizabeth and James"-their fashion lines-"and you see even in them this shift towards sophistication."

Perhaps that will soon trickle down, and all these wanly bicycling, pallid Williamsburg Winonas will morph into the Betties of Brooklyn Heights?

But for now the Dirty Girls are still with us: staring out blankly from American Apparel ads and most conc
entrated in the photographs of Mr. Hunter.

"There are always people who will live this lifestyle," Mr. Hunter said, "And people who will follow it, get bored and change. But I don't think it's going anywhere."

Perhaps that's exactly what the Dirty Girl look is, then: a phase, no different from mean boyfriends or naval piercings, that will always define a time in young womanhood and that, inevitably, passes with time. "They are clearly investing a lot of time into how they get dressed-and in lieu of what can be a whole conversation," Ms. Slowey said. "And then they grow up or they actually have the talent to back it up, like Chloë Sevigny, and eventually they probably want to start marketing themselves somehow, whether they are actresses or performers, and they're going to have to start taking themselves seriously. At some point how you look becomes business. It's fun to slum it, but there is a shelf life to that."

ialeksander@observer.com

No, seriously. Has it ever been more mind-numbingly confusing/complicated to be a goil than it is right now? And I fear the situation may be getting worse. While men sit around farting and twiddling their BlackBerrys, the chicks writhe in agony under the increasing pressure to optimize every aspect of their lives, and everyone else’s. They are expected to look like Angelina Jolie; be as nurturing and upbeat as Maria Von Trapp; be as decisive and reassuring as Winston Churchill; and be as tigress-y and protective as Gloria Allred. The pressure to be perfect, self-imposed and otherwise is, like, totally off the chizzies. 
This past week, I was forced to confront, in no uncertain terms, the epic scale of the challenges that dog the glamour-pusses and socialites of N.Y.C. on a daily basis.

TUESDAY, APRIL 6: An amazingly good-looking group of chicks—Lauren Santo Domingo, Chloë Sevigny and Dasha Zhukova, amongst others—all showed up at Barneys for the launch of scribe-socialite Derek Blasberg’s hilarious new etiquette manual, titled Classy. Derek’s book directly addresses one of the biggest challenges facing women today: How to project the ludicrous degree of sizzling hotness that our culture demands of every female, without turning into a skank. Classy’s tips are broad-ranging and include a vital and cautionary note about the fad for Japanese tattoos: ‘You might think you got “goddess” on your hip bone, but it could very likely be “toilet seat.”

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7: The Women in Need gala at the Waldorf—my Jonny and I were there to cheer our honoree pal, Glamour magazine editrix Cindi Lieve—was full of women who clearly were in need of very little, except maybe a respite from the burden of looking totally perfect every time they appear in public. The standards of flawless coiffure and couture for the prominent New York gal have become sadistically high. Unfortunately, it is no longer considered cool to show up with fag burns in your miniskirt, à la Edie Sedgwick. FYI, girls: I hate to sound smug, but it took Jonny and me about two minutes to get dressed that night.

THURSDAY, APRIL 8: I flew to Scottsdale, Ariz., with Ashley Olsen. Actually, she was in first class and I was back by the turlets. But that’s O.K. I’m not bitter. I would rather be an F-list celebrity man, back by the turlets, than face the kind of fan onslaught to which Ms. Olsen and her twin sister were subsequently subjected.

We were headed to the new Barneys store to stage a fall fashion show of the Olsen clothing line, The Row. After the flawless defile, out came the phone cameras, flashing away. Mary Kate and Ashley were impressively tolerant of this insanely intrusive ritual. The horrifyingly naff mania for documenting social events with phone pics now includes all generations. This gruesome substitute for human interaction is assault—packaged as homage, making it impossible to remonstrate with the amateur paparazzi. Women seem to be the primary target. They are also the primary perpetrators.

FRIDAY, APRIL 9: Back to N.Y.C. at the crack of ass. If further proof is needed that being a woman is fraught with complexity, then I certainly get it on this particular morning. While I breeze through security, my colleague Delphine—a new mom with a hungry lad named Hugo waiting at home—is forced to unpack and repack a breast pump AND a massive quilted nylon bag filled with gallons of BREAST MILK!!! While I loll in the lounge reading US Weekly, Delphine has to wait for hours while her copious lactations are tested for traces of explosives.

Cheers, Hugo! Drink up and celebrate the fact that you were born a carefree little bloke!

sdoonan@observer.com
 

Womens Wear Daily reported today that the twins would be launching a new juniors line for JC Penney: it will be called Olsenboye, "which is the Olsens’ ancestral name." The line will be promoted using "a new marketing approach for the retailer built around previews, limited offerings and digital, guerrilla and viral marketing tactics." For the time being, this means a cupcake truck.

Having ventured forth to visit the Olsentruck at its current location in Union Square, I regret to report that the stuff looks bad--sort of what you'd expect from the likes of Whitney Port, not someone Cathy Horyn has called "ruthlessly modern." There were T-shirts. There were many peace signs. The guerrilla marketers, distributing balloons, appeared to outnumber the customers.

And the cupcakes: so tiny.

The organizer’s president, designer Diane von Furstenberg, stood near the entrance in a white knee-length dress, snapping photos of arrivals, which included Ashley Olsen, Blake Lively, Claire Danes, Justin Timberlake and Anna Wintour in sunglasses, with a small digital camera. “Tonight is a family affair,” she said. “We all get together and we vote for our peers and we raise money for the CFDA. It’s just a very nice affair. It’s very exciting that we are in Lincoln Center, and it’s all new.”

Even though sales are down, Ms. von Furstenberg professed optimism. “There will always be spirit of fashion; otherwise, there is no fashion,” she said. “The economy is a little hard, but then again, on the other side, we have Obama.”

Designer Marc Jacobs strolled in with fiancé Lorenzo Martone, and offered a few words on the recent radical changes in his personal style. “I like taking the time to take care of myself, which I never did before,” Mr. Jacobs said, Mr. Martone keeping a firm hand on his back. “There was a time in my life when I was super-trendy and I loved really crazy clothes; then I kind of didn’t care at all because I was working so hard and so many hours; and now I’m kind of finding the balance between working hard and also working on myself.”

What does Mr. Jacobs see for the future of fashion?

“I’m never very good about at thinking about the future,” he said. “I’m usually O.K. thinking about the present.”

Senior vice president of IMG Fashion Fern Mallis was wearing an orange dress, sweater and matching bag. “The designers are very much like ambassadors in New York,” she said, “players who help define what our city is about. Fashion is one of the marquee industries here. There is so much talent in this city. There are so many people!”

What are her predictions for fall Fashion Week?

“I expect to see what we always expect to see, which is people working their asses off,” Ms. Mallis said. “To understand who their customers are and design things that will make people absolutely, desperately want to buy something, because nobody in this room and nobody that we all work for needs one new piece of clothing. We are not in the business of selling underwear. It’s about fashion, it’s the thing that will make your life different, change you, make you feel great at a party, and will make something happen for you. It’s the magic that we’re all selling.”

Model Heidi Klum, wearing silver, walked in with designer Michael Kors, who laughed and said how his escort always likes to shorten all of her dresses.

“Glamour and feeling better about yourself when you put on the right garment—it never changes,” Mr. Kors said of these tough time. “Doesn’t matter if you’re in a boom economy or a bust economy—actually, in a recession, more than ever, you want to feel good about yourself. So maybe it’s just people are getting smarter about how they shop, maybe you are not buying things that are disposable anymore. But I think fashion is like a great meal or a great movie. What a great joy it brings.“