Sharon Socol

Last week, the Transom took the elevator to one of the most fashionable floors in town--the ninth floor of Barneys New York--for a celebration of photographer Sharon Socol’s new book, Plus One: An Outsider's Photographic Journey into the World of Fashion. And it was nothing so much as an insider's affair.

There was a towering geek-chic Jenna Lyons with girlfriend Courtney Crangi, photographer Gilles Bensimon, and designers galore including Isabel and Ruben Toledo, Richard Chai, Tommy Hilfiger, Yigal Azrouel, and Rag & Bone’s David Neville and Marcus Wainwright, among others.

Pretty fancy line-up of insiders, considering Ms. Socol's theme. Then again, Ms. Socol was never a true outsider herself. She gained access to high-profile industry events and fashion shows as the "plus one" to her husband, Howard Socol, the former CEO of Barneys New York, using her camera to document and navigate the fashion world.

Hosts for the fete were friends of Ms. Socol--Diane von Furstenberg (a no-show), Narciso Rodriguez and Simon Doonan--all of whom are featured in the book of black-and-white photos and happen to be the holy trinity of wrap dresses, minimalist sportswear and window dressage.

After powwowing with Mr. Rodriguez and Paper Magazine’s Mickey Boardman, Mr. Doonan waxed philosophical with the Transom on the importance of being an outsider.

“It's good to be a bit of an outlier. It's not good to be always in, because then you get your objectivity, you keep your objectivity. It's good to be in and it's good to be out," he said.

And how might a young person infiltrate the wondrous world of fashion, we wondered?

“I think young people have become too driven and too demented too young,” said Mr. Doonan. “When I was in my twenties, I was having fun, travelling and being stupid, and being useless. Everyone's too uptight. So my big advice to young people is: chillax.”

Chill as hell, we sauntered over to a nearby tête-à-tête, where we asked Mr. Rodriguez if he ever felt like an outsider. The sweet and soft-spoken designer seemed shocked at our implicit suggestion that the fashion industry could ever resemble Heathers-esque competition. "I think it's very open for all people, who come here and study fashion,” said Mr. Rodriguez. "I was never locked out."

Just before leaving, we tracked down Thakoon Panichgul, a modern it-kid, as a companion tugged him toward the elevators. Mr. Panichgul said, “I always hung out with, like, people who are not inside. Even in college I was like, I always wanted to be on the fringe of things. I never wanted to be in the fix of everything."

So what did the Transom learn from fashion's cool kids? That out is in and the industry is one big happy family?

Hmm. Dubious. Although the Transom did deduce one truth: if you want to crack into the fashion world, the least you can do is dress like you belong--and if that fails, marry a luxury department store head.

Road show: Mark Zuckerberg slipped into the midtown Sheraton through a side door to address investors yesterday, and left in the company of "a dozen beefy security guards," the Journal reports, as Facebook kicked off its IPO road show. The presentation opened with a 30-minute video presentation available here. Following a delay while Facebook's 27-year-old CEO was apparently having a hard time finding his way back from the bathroom, Zuck, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman fielded questions on the company's strategies for China, mobile revenues and its recent $1 billion Instagram acquisition. With excitement building, analysts have been quick to offer opinions on Facebook, with Sterne Agee slapping a buy on the company and Wedbush Securities assigning a $44 price target to the stock.

So sorry: Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson apologized to employees for lying on his ... wait, no, for the distraction caused by the "disclosure of my academic credentials." You can find the whole letter (addressed "Yahoos:") over at Dealbook. Third Point Capital's Dan Loeb has been calling for Mr. Thompson to step down since last week, when the hedge fund manager asserted that the executive lied on his resume.

Trader exodus: Nearly two dozen of Wall Street's most profitable credit traders have defected from banks in the past 13 months, Bloomberg reports, as lenders cut bonuses and regulators seek to limit the types of trading banks can engage in.

Chopping red tape: Bank of America data chief John Bottega has a fourth-degree black belt in Okinawa karate, so watch what you say about consolidating bank data, a cause Bottega championed in a previous position at the New York Fed.

Fashion finance: Barney's New York will escape bankruptcy after swapping about $540 million in debt for equity with Richard C. Perry's Perry Capital and Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies. The fashion retailer, which filed Chapter 11 in 1996, was acquired by Istithmar, the Dubai-based private-equity firm, for $942 million in 2007. Mr. Perry is known for his "sharp style," and shop's at Barney's, according to Dealbook. No word on Mr. Burkle's fashion sense.

Bailout bonus: The Government Accountability Office said the U.S. could turn a $15.1 billion profit on its bailout of AIG, and Forbes breaks down some of the math. The government had $46.3 billion outstanding in the insurer as of March 22, including the Treasury's $35.9 billion equity stake and $8.3 billion owed to the Fed.

Government nod: Ally Financial has the Treasury's support to put its ResCap mortgage-lending unit into bankruptcy, an Obama administration official told Bloomberg. The auto lender, which was bailed out to the tune of $17 billion, is 74 percent owned by the U.S. government.

Check yourself: The SEC has called for an independent investigation into charges of sexual misconduct against current and former staff in the watchdog's own inspector general's office, sources familiar told the Journal. David Kotz, who was the agency's inspector general during the time the misconduct is said to have occurred, told the paper "as far as I know, the allegations do not involve me."

[Photo by Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images]

We've all pictured Jim Carrey having gay sex, but we were all completely wrong. 

Barneys has money problems. 

Running the numbers on Marina Abramovic.

ADHD: not so hard to fake, according to a study called "Detection of Feigned ADHD in College Students."

Jack White and Conan O'Brien record live album.

Ray Kelly apologizes for taking people's bikes when Obama was in town.

More Twilight.

Keds supports art on canvas

Thom Browne wants men to get their act together.

TGI Fridays plants its flag in Union Square, ironically ruining my Friday.

And...The New Yorker hops on the "icing" analysis bandwagon.

My epiphany came last week while reading A Time to Be Born, the late Dawn Powell’s searing satire about two gals clawing their way to the top in prewar N.Y.C. Halfway through the book, one of the characters realizes that the key to social success is a certain remoteness, and that “the public does not like its idols to be folksy.” Darn! No wonder I’m not being idolized.

Take last week, for instance: On the night of Monday, April 19, I skipped off to the SCAD (Savannah College Of Art and Design) Etoile awards, where my Jonny was performing the role of emcee. Movie star Michael Douglas was sitting directly behind me, looking composed but sad, as you might when you know that one of your kids is about to become extraordinarily unavailable, courtesy of the prison system. (His troubled lad Cameron got a five-year-plus-parole sentence for drug-dealing the following day.)

Delighted though I was to be in such close proximity to Kirk’s talented and still-good-looking son, I was scanning the horizon for another celeb, Etoile honoree du soir, Catherine Deneuve. My newfound realizations about the perils of folksy availability have only fueled my interest in meeting the fabulously blank cinematic icon. I am happy to report that she exceeded my expectations by being even more glacial and remote than usual. In fact, she never showed up at all. She was stuck in Paris, wreathed in Icelandic ash and Gitanes smoke.

Instead, we had Fergie, the only person on earth other than Richard Simmons who is actually more folksy and available than myself. The likable Duchess of York bopped onto the stage to receive an award for ash-bound David “Shanghai” Tang. Memo to me: Filling in to pick up other people’s awards for them is the ne plus ultra of folksy availability.

Tuesday night found me surrounded by iconic foodies—Batali, Lagasse, Colicchio—at the Foodbank fund-raiser at Chelsea Piers. Nothing says “folksy availability” quite like an iconic chef. Here is a milieu where down-to-earth affability is not just acceptable, it is positively de rigueur.

In this sea of gourmandizing jollity, the less-folksy non-foodie celebs stood out like sore thumbs: Salman Rushdie, U2’s the Edge and Helena Christensen maintained a certain air of unavailability by intermittently withdrawing from the general frivolity throughout the evening. They accomplished this by pulling out their phones and embarking on bouts of scrolling and texting, smiling creepily all the while. (It’s the smiling that works my folksy nerves.)

As somebody who regards the phone as an annoying appliance for conveying bad news and problems—“SD, you need to rewrite the copy on the Prada ad”—I find the contemporary mania for 24-hour phone diddling to be not just deeply naff but also wildly incomprehensible. Why check your emails when it’s never good news? I guess it provides the perpetrator with some kind mystique-enhancing moment of squishy self-involvement. It certainly communicates unfolksy unavailability. Memo to self: In the future, intermittently ignore those around you, pull out your phone and grin mysteriously while fumbling with the buttons.

On Thursday night, my Jonny and I went to support his author-economist brother, David Adler. (He wrote that book Snap Judgment, a spunky and highly readable challenge to the whole Gladwellian belief in spontaneous decision making.) Mr. Adler has produced a behavioral finance documentary called Mind Over Money, which was premiering at the Museum of Finance on Wall Street (it airs this week on PBS Nova).

During the Nova-sponsored post-movie panel discussion, I had little or no idea what anyone was talking about. Then, mercifully, the topic of shopping came up, accompanied by a nugget of truly startling information. Brace yourselves! According to Harvard professor Jennifer Lerner, women are disinclined to shop when they are frightened or angry—hence the plunge in purchases after Wall Street crashes or terrorist attacks—but more inclined to shop when they feel sad.

OMG! The rest of the week is a blur. After hearing this game-changing tidbit, my retailer’s brain skipped off down the rabbit hole and began concocting ever more baroque ways to make customers mournful, preferably without them realizing it. What if we dressed little children à la Oliver Twist and stationed them at the various entrances to Barneys? What if we piped in Andy Williams singing “Autumn Leaves” over and over again? The customers might shop their brains out, but what would be the effect on the salespeople? Maybe they would go all limp and suicidal and be unable to help the weeping-but-shopaholic customers?

Let’s end on a sad note and see if it catapults you, dear reader, into a clothes-buying frenzy. Here goes. True fact: Despite being a total genius—she was Hemingway’s favorite writer—Dawn Powell died uncelebrated and was buried in an unmarked grave on Hart Island. Now go shop!

sdoonan@observer.com

Yes, a horrid wart! In full view of my public? Can you believe? That’s what I get for trying to avoid the H1N1 virus. What the hell am I talking about? I’ll explain all about Mr. Wart in just a moment. First, let’s talk about something more uplifting and festive:

The Barneys holiday windows! This year I have created, along with my elves, an homage to Saturday Night Live. What prompted this? Glad you asked: It’s the 35th anniversary of the Lorne Michaels laugh-a-minute juggernaut. Barneys and SNL, two fabulous New York icons, eternally reinventing themselves. Why, the press release writes itself.

For the past six weeks, my elves and I have been szooshing and papier-mâché-ing and caricaturing the most iconic SNL characters into giant holiday ornaments: Maya Rudolph’s Condi, Steve Martin’s King Tut, hermaphroditic Pat, Church Lady, Wayne’s World, etc., right up to the brilliantly loony Kristen Wiig channeling the malevolent and bizarre Gilly.

And there are cigarettes! For the first time in years, I have been able to stick fags in the window without fear of censure. Killer Bee Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Father Guido Sarducci are all lit up!

Raking through the SNL archive was a brutal reminder of the passing of time: When I arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s, just a simple window dresser with a dream, Saturday Night Live, with its good-looking cast of groovy long-hairs, provided me with a nifty shortcut into American culture. The catchphrases spread like herpes, or warts (but let’s not go there yet); ’ere long I, too, was shrieking “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” and “Jane, you ignorant slut” and “Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!”

Reading the old scripts brought back bittersweet memories of many deceased greats. Babawawa (Gilda Radner) interviewing Marwene (Madeline Kahn in full Dietrich mode) is a personal fave:

GILDA: Marwene … you are so withe and swender. How do you stay so swim?

MADELINE: Swimming keeps me swim. My daily wegimen incwudes swimming twelve waps in my pool. It’s wonderful for my wegs.

I wish my wart was on my weg where nobody could see it. It’s not. It’s in full view on my wight middle knuckle.

It all started with Barack Obama and that fist bump. When I saw him do it, I thought, “Bingo! The perfect way to sidestep the horror of shaking hands with people whose paws are, if not crawling with microbes, then at least clammy and foul.”

Full disclosure: I have a long history of obsessive hand-washing. By the age of 10, I had earned myself the nickname “Lady Macbeth.”

Armed with my new fist bump (please don’t call it “fisting”; that is something entirely different, and very horrid, and involves many, many more germs and requires a lot more equipment, including, but not limited to, a sling), I charged into the fall season. I felt empowered by having found the perfect germ-free solution—bold, forthright and butch—to a complicated social dilemma. Wart could possibly go wrong?

Suddenly last week, I noticed a suspicious nodule. “Verruca vulgaris,” said my dermatologist, Dr. Grace Pak, adding, somewhat unnecessarily, “the common wart.” As the Church Lady/Dana Carvey would always say, “Well, isn’t that special?”

Dr. Pak confirmed that the wart was, most likely, a direct consequence of my Lady Macbeth routine, plus bumping. “Excessive hand-washing can impair the skin-barrier function, “ she noted. “Forceful contact can easily transfer the HPV wart virus to the knuckle area.”

Oy vay! Wart a disaster! I have no idea when I contracted the unsightly thing, or how many thousands of bumpees have been the unwitting recipients. Of one thing I am certain: Typhoid Mary has a new friend. Warty Walter, at your service.

And, now, as this most festive of seasons descends, Warty Walter has to scramble to find a whole new socially acceptable greeting. As Roseanne Roseannadanna once said, “It’s always something.”

Happy holidays!

sdoonan@observer.com

The crowd had huge squeals for Alexander Wang, who spent a half hour on the 7th floor teaching visitors to “walk like a model.” The attraction was improbably popular among awkward preteen girls. They were short and wore braces and they couldn’t wait to walk. Mr. Wang wrapped them in a coat as if offering his benediction, and mussed too-neat hair before setting them a-strut. Enthusiastic cheers greeted the few guys and older ladies who braved the runway.

Mr. Wang was accompanied by three models, who bopped blithely with one another as the crowd mobbed him for photos.

Mr. Wang and his models slipped out by 7:30—off to Opening Ceremony, he told us.

Downstairs, the Proenza Schouler designers were autographing their new wallets. “To the love of our lives, Julie,” wrote Lazaro Hernandez on a wallet for Barneys Fashion Director Julie Gilhart.

“We wouldn’t be doing this right now if it wasn’t for this lady,” he added.

Jack McCollough said that the wallets had been moving pretty well—the picked-over table had been full when they arrived.

“It’s like a glorified lemonade stand,” he said.

Of course, the models in attendance also proved popular. Coco Rocha seemed convincingly fun as she posed for photos with shoppers. (“Star together in your very own flipbook!”) Loose and goofy, she hammed it up for the cameras with an inflatable guitar. Raquel Zimmerman and Sessilee Lopez put in a surprise appearance—big hugs all around—but then left with a stylist friend to go find Vogue Fashion Director Tonne Goodman.

But were visitors more interested in celebrity designers, or in Barneys’ actual wares? Shoes seemed to be holding visitors’ interest better than most other merchandise—but not better than complimentary food and drink. The prosecco ran out an hour and a half into the evening, and the line for free Fred’s pizza on the 9th floor only grew more impressive as the night wore on. The clothing drive donation barrels tended to become trash cans for cocktail napkins. Oops.

Wipe that disdainful expression off your face! If it’s good enough for Jenna Jameson, Hugh Downs, Barbara Eden, Leslie Nielsen, Ricky Schroder, former Vice President Dan Quayle and Alice Cooper, it’s certainly good enough for you. I’m talking about Scottsdale, Ariz., my new home away from home, and a place that you should seriously think about adding to your could-I-bear-to-live-there? list.

Thought it was just a sleepy retirement community? Geriatric, schmeriatric! Having just returned from yet another surprise-packed trip, I am telling you, Scottsdale is one surreal and crazy town. Stylish, too.

Did you know, for example, that Ms. Jameson, the porn star, is such a big fashion shopper that she has her very own dedicated parking spot at the Fashion Square Mall? No? Thought not.

There’s oodles of high culture, as well. At the labyrinthine Westin, where I sojourned last week, I was treated to the haunting spectacle of a Scottish bagpipe player. He appears on the golf course every day around 5, performing in 100-degree-plus heat while wearing a scratchy kilt. As if that weren’t decadent enough, the cocktail bar in the Westin lobby is named the Rim.

Everything in Scottsdale is much more louche and naughty than you might expect. Even the food. One of the principal local delicacies is, in fact, totally illegal. I am talking about the notorious bacon-wrapped Mexican hot dog. (Food safety codes prohibit the wrapping of uncooked pork products around a pre-cooked item.) This addictive Sonoran snack can be purchased on various street corners for $3. The illicit frisson only serves to fuel the ardor of the locals for this wildly decadent cholesterol-busting bargain treat. Ask for it “con todos” and you won’t be disappointed.

Why Scottsdale, why now?

My focus on Scottsdale results from the fact that there’s a Barneys flagship store opening in the aforementioned mall. I have been making reconnaissance trips to prepare for the Oct. 15 opening, and am starting to make quite an impression on the locals. I might be five feet four and a half inches in New York, but in Scottsdale I am Shaq-tastically gigantic. (He lives there, too!) Last week alone I was the featured guest on two local morning TV shows. A third appearance was canceled when word reached the station that rain was in the offing. All reporters were dispatched to various corners of the Scottsdale-Phoenix area to interview the locals about how they were coping with the possibility of rain. Mention the word “precipitation,” and everyone goes to pieces.

Speaking of dramas: Last week, I had my first Scottsdale health emergency. Here’s what went down: A colleague and I were taste-testing mini-desserts for the opening bash. The proffered stuffed raspberry looked innocent enough. But while masticating, a strange electrical tingle exploded in my head. I assumed the worst and prepared to collapse to the floor and transition into a vegetative state.

“Pop Rocks!” shouted the chef, who had cunningly inserted the weird 1970s candy into the offending fruit. I am telling you, nothing is too wild and crazy for the people of Scottsdale.

On my next trip, I fully intend to visit one of the Arizona Indian casinos, which lie on the outskirts of the city. Local TV commercials hosted by glamorous and otherwise “slot coordinators” have mesmerized me with their tantalizing descriptions of the newest innovations, including Star Trek– and Playboy-themed one-arm bandits.

Care to join? If you get lucky at the tables, you could snap up a foreclosed real estate bargain. Worst-case scenario, you can always get a job as a slot coordinator. We can celebrate with a Mexican hot dog. Say goodbye to the Highline and the Monkey Bar and lets go party down at the Rim!

sdoonan@observer.com 

It was a Saturday night, and he was checking out the scene in the bar’s “back room,” which was, well, a room in the back. More later.

At a little after 2 a.m., the little room was packed. So was the bar. So was the dance floor.

Before Sept. 15, the day the economy was sort of officially declared dunzo, the bar’s location on Avenue B might have recommended itself to a trendy, starkly furnished Asian-fusion bar-resto for investment bankers with a little imagination or Queer Eye on permanent TiVo.

But walking in to the Hose was like walking into a time warp: an East Village gay bar from the last recession. Drinks were sloshing across the bar at breakneck speed; and there was nudity! And scattered smoking! (Though on one recent visit, a patron lighting a cigarette in the back room was told to put it out. “That’s so not sexy,” the bartender scolded.)

“A bunch of us noticed the same thing when we got together on Monday,” said Brian Moylan, the editor of Next Magazine, a gay nightlife guide in New York. “We came in, and we’re like, ‘I went to blah-blah-blah and everything was packed! And my colleague is like, ‘Oh my God! I went to so-and-so and it was packed! And we put it together. Everyone is fucking going out. It’s January—or February now! And the weather is cold. It’s not a time when clubs are full. And people are standing in lines in the cold! That’ll kill your party quicker than anything.”

“There’s something definitely happening out there,” he continued.

Meanwhile Mr. Cogan was continuing his proclamation.

“I’ll give up nothing!” he said. “You know what’s going to cure the world? It’s people going about their daily business!”

“It’s crazy here!” said Sean Bumgarner, a 34-year-old magazine art director, who is one of the creative talents behind Spank, a xeroxed gay art ’zine (remember those?) that was playing host to the night’s revelry. “We’re definitely in a downturn, and everyone is out.”

Outside these walls, all you hear about is the sagging economy and stimulus packages. Inside, things were … stimulated!

“Wait, is that guy naked?” asked Mark Damien, a 44-year-old writer, whose jaw dropped to the floor when he confirmed his first impression. “Uh, I guess things have loosened up a bit.”

The naked man was named Tony. When asked for two names, he offered, “Naked Tony.”

So, Tony, is the gay scene getting its edge back?

“There are pockets of it,” the 36-year-old murmured.

FORMIKA’S CABINET

Over the past few months, while the straight party scene has been left for dead, gay nights and venues look like they are surviving, with new ones sprouting up everywhere. And, in some cases, like this night at the Hose, they really are Events (not vodka promotions!) with Themes! There is buzz! Costumes! Sleaze! There is planning, for a whole week before, aimed at getting into the right place at the perfect time of the night.

“Given the news about the economy that came out of the late summer and fall, when we were in November, I was saying that all of us have to hope for a mild winter,” said Bob Pontarelli, the longtime co-owner of Chelsea gay bar Barracuda and of the very gay-friendly Elmo restaurant on Seventh Avenue. “I was anticipating a perfect storm of cold weather and the economy. And then we had a worse winter than we’ve had in five years. So it’s been very, very, very cold and add to that the recession. But you know what? We haven’t been affected by a percentage point. In some places, we’re doing better. What I was worried about actually hasn’t happened, and it hasn’t affected us.”

According to some of his patrons, the downturn has, if anything, redirected their budgets to Going Out.

“I mean, we’ll skip going out to dinner and go out for drinks instead now,” said Christian, a 27-year-old in fashion PR, to his 27-year-old friend Jon at Barracuda on Friday night.

They both agreed, emphatically, that giving up on their night on the Crawl, whether it be on Eighth Avenue or Avenue A, was not an option.

Michael Formika Jones has been promoting gay-themed parties and nightclub evenings for 18 years in New York, but has found himself without much to do over the last three years.

“Oh I’m loving the recession!” he said. “I’m jumping on this recession bandwagon. I haven’t done a big party. Period. In three years.”

But in the next eight weeks, he’s booked three big events. One of them is at 55 Gansevoort, a two-floor restaurant and a loft apartment above it, as well as a basement bar. It’s always been one of those straight, bottle-service type clubs on weekends before.

“Buh-bye to that!” Mr. Jones chirped. “No more $15 drinks!”

He’ll be opening it up for a Saturday party.

“My take on all of this is after the crackdown with the Giuliani era, it affected the way nightlife was run. A lot of venues had to take the bridge-and-tunnel tourist dollar on Saturday night,” he said. “Now in recession big venues are losing weekend business, so they’re opening up their weekend business to promoters for stuff that wasn’t open to the gays before.”

“Hey, remember, a recession is a gay man’s vacation.”

BREAKFAST AT BERGDORF’S

“The bar scene hasn’t been affected at all,” said Andrew Suarez, a 25-year-old waiter and Marymount student whom we found shopping at Bergdorf Goodman Men’s on Monday afternoon who was telling us about his weekend of drinking in Hell’s Kitchen. “I was just partying this weekend for my birthday? And it was absolutely, completely, you-couldn’t-walk-through-it packed.”

Nor, he said, have he or his friends stopped shopping.

“I definitely still have to shop” he said. “It’s got to be done. We can’t let it affect the way we live. I’m a shopper, and most of my gay friends are.”

“I haven’t bought a full-priced piece of merchandise in the last two months because there are so many sales,” said trim 28-year-old Ken Gillett, who was shopping at Bloomingdale’s on Monday afternoon, where we heard a hyped-up remix of Madonna’s “Give it 2 Me” blasting over the store’s speakers. “I’ve actually been shopping more, I think!”

“It’s a better time to shop,” said John Traynor, a 42-year-old human relations recruiter who lives on the Upper West Side. “You might as well buy stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to buy.”

And the sales are everywhere: 40 percent off a John Varvatos white button-down listed at $225; 50 percent off a black Polo sports coat for $1,195; 40 percent off a Marc by Marc Jacobs $198 blue V-neck sweater; 40 percent off a $395 Michael Kors zip-up turtleneck sweater. And for the investment-minded, deep discounts on the coveted embroidered and individually numbered Vilebrequin seashell swim trunks at Barneys!

At the Bergdorf Goodman Men’s store on Fifth Avenue, sales associates in the building said the second floor, which is the Wall Street man’s floor of choice—full of trousers and suits and ties—has been a ghost town since the recession began. Meanwhile, the building’s third floor, which features labels like Alexander McQueen and Thom Browne—a salesman described the floor as being “owned” by the gays—has been bustling the same as ever.

“I just spent $2,000, but I’d like to keep that to once a month now,” said Paul Vinci, a 43-year-old insurance man from Chelsea who was shopping for himself and his partner. “It used to be $10,000 a month, so we’ve scaled back.”

Items included in his shopping spree: two black beaded bracelets for $750; a Jil Sander sweater; a Dolce & Gabanna sweater; a pair of slacks; and shoes.

RECESSIONOMICS FOR GAYS

The day Lehman Brothers fell, the downtown-demimonde nightlife promoter Chi Chi Valenti, the genius behind such New York legends as Night of a Thousand Stevies and Click+Drag, wrote a note to her message board.

“If there’s one part of this week’s economic implosion that sure smells like a silver lining from here, it is the prospect of we New Yorkers finally getting a few of our clubs and downtown streets back,” she wrote. “Some of New York’s most enduring clubs have been born in dark financial times indeed, from the Mudd Club during New York City’s near-bankrupcy [sic] to our own Jackie 60 during the LAST Bush Presidency/Recession. High commercial rents were among the prime villains that drove creative clubs and nights virtually OUT of Manhattan in the last five years, and hopefully a poorer city government will no longer have the resources to spend on venue harassment. Throw in almost certain Cabaret Law reform, and a sense of impending doom. Can a new Golden Age in clubs be far behind?”

During better times, Michael Formika Jones said, “they’ll fine you for everything. Booty on the bar. Having candles lit. Being overcapacity by 10 people. Not having paper towels behind the bars. If you’re a busy gay club, you’re getting fined for every little thing so should shut you down. But they’ve got other things to worry about. This is good times for us!”

We checked in with John D’Emilio, professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and author of Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970, to see if Ms. Valenti might be proven right.

“In the ’70s, for the first time in New York, investing in gay businesses such as a bar or a disco or a bathhouse could actually be a profitable and an attractive investment for gay men because they’re not dealing with either the police or organized crime,” he said. “In New York, there were more gay bars opening and gay bathhouses and the disco scene develops by ’73 or ’74. The city was in economic crisis, but gay male society was thriving.”

And in Chicago and San Francisco, he’s studied surges in gay venues and drag performances during the real Great Depression. So, now?

“I’d say it’s intriguing, but I don’t know if you can draw a big conclusion about it.”

But outside of the strict historiographical constraints observed by Mr. D’Emilio, other parts of academe were giving us a little more love.

“During a recession, there’s a greater emphasis on tangibility,” said Richard Goldstein, a pop culture professor at Hunter and the former executive editor at The Village Voice. “When there’s money in the economy, you’ll take more chances and you’ll invest in things that are speculative. But everyone speculated! That’s why the banks crashed.”

To Mr. Goldstein, profiles on singles Web sites like Manhunt are a form of Internet speculation—that is, it’s virtual, it’s risky, you can’t really ever size up if that picture is really what that guy looks like. You know, like E-Trade, with the emphasis on trade.

“Now, there’s a need for things you can touch and see in front of you and whose value you gauge with your eyes and, you know, through the vibe one person gives to another which is physical, which you can’t get when it’s virtual,” he continued. “There have been too many thrills in the last decade, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the style of cruising is less virtual and more tangible.”

So, off the Internet and into the bars?

On Saturday night, a bit after midnight, two boys were testing out this theory at Cake Shop, a cafe on Ludlow Street that converts its basement into a gay punk party named Queers, Beers and Rears once a month. The two boys temporarily broke off a make-out session in order to chat.

“I think I go out more now!” said 24-year-old Josh Dull, who was wearing a Ghostbusters II trucker hat, a tight T-shirt and red suspenders fastened to skinny jeans. “I grew up poor, and this doesn’t bother me. Now everyone feels how I’ve felt my entire life.”

Around this time, the people running the door at Cake Shop wouldn’t allow any more people in—the basement had reached capacity. Near the bathroom, 24-year-old Max Steele, a hipster with a mop of red curly hair who was stripped down to nothing but a pair of black briefs, was waiting in an impossible line.

“Gays love a recession because we hate the capitalist economy that’s found in the hetero-normative patriarchy anyways,” said the young man, a law-firm drone by day and a performer and go-go dancer by night. “I say burn the motherfucker down! Right? Fuck Prop 8! Who gives a fuck? We should burn down Wall Street and take over New York.”

He took a sobering breath.

“Gays are the only people with dispensable money—dispensable income or whatever?” he said, telling us he was a Sarah Lawrence grad. “Well, not for me personally.”

So we wondered what he was doing out.

“I’m like $60,000 in debt from school,” he said. “I’m fucked anyway.”

jkoblin@observer.com

Additional reporting by Joe Pompeo

Victoria Beckham will appear on the cover of Russian Vogue's February issue. [Vogue UK]

Barneys is rumored to be up for sale and may be close to naming a new chief executive officer. [WWD] 

Yves Saint Laurent began the men's shows in Paris on Wednesday evening with an short erotic fashion film starring the actor Michael Pitt. [Vogue UK] 

 The sneakers that Kanye West designed for Louis Vuitton look like Nikes painted in monochromatic reds and oranges. [Fashionista]  

“Every time you come here you have to,” she said, while browsing the handbag section of Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday with her husband in tow. “You can’t help yourself.”

The Limas and another couple got “the best deal ever” on a weekend at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Battery Park City, she said: $250 a night on a deluxe suite overlooking the park, with a cook-to-order breakfast and free drinks during cocktail hour included in the rate. “Can you stand it?” Ms. Lima asked in a hushed, conspiratorial tone.

Though she said she is a bargain-hunter by nature—Ms. Lima bought the black cashmere, fur-collared coat she wore Saturday, for instance, for $75—this year one does not need to be a particularly discerning shopper to find deals. Ironically, she purchased a vintage leather clutch-sized wallet “with the cutest snaps you’ve ever seen” from Delfino for $100.

“You just have a budget,” Ms. Lima said of how the economic downturn has influenced her shopping habits. “You stick to your budget and have a good time within the budget.”

Other consumers appear to be abiding by similar recession-spending rules as the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, approaches.

“Things are a little slow,” said wardrobe consultant Julie Biandi while hunting for clients at Barneys with a friend. “A lot of them are relying on me to shop more methodically. Before, people would call me to shop for them at stores, but now they are doing more shopping in their closet.”

Rather then buy a new party dress this season, she is helping clients scour their wardrobes for a great black dress and accessorizing it with costume jewelry, like a Vera Wang bangle.

Though the current fourth quarter of 2008 is supposedly one of the worst in retail since the Great Depression, elite Manhattan department stores were packed with shoppers over the weekend; Fifth Avenue was aglow with holiday lights; and the city issued its first gridlock alert of the season.

“I’ve never seen it like this with so many sales and the department stores are in shambles,” said Betsy Reynolds, a visitor from Alabama who strolled through Barneys with the air of a native New Yorker. Ms. Reynolds, 57, makes two trips a year to Manhattan with her 19-year-old daughter, Lauren.

Both mother and daughter agreed that this has been their most “frustrating” retail expedition yet and they prefer to shop when “everything in the world is [not] on sale.” “Going to Bergdorf, which to me is the classic department store that there ever was, you know we went up there and the whole store was in shambles like a low-class department store.”

“I would rather buy at regular price than to go through all this,” her daughter chimed in.

LUXURY BRANDS THAT A year ago would never deign to put “Sale” signs in their windows before the New Year are now in “survival mode,” according to Renee Kopel, the marketing director for the 122-year-old William Barthman Jewelers in the Financial District. Walk-in traffic has plummeted since September and, for the second year in a row, their corporate gift gallery is competing against an iconic blue box: Tiffany’s opened an 11,000-square-foot Wall Street branch in October 2007.

Ms. Kopel began circulating an e-mail urging longtime clients—many of them from the shrinking financial services sector—to buy gifts from William Barthman during what will likely be the most ascetic winter in years and advertising 20 to 40 percent off most merchandise. “We are extremely mindful of the state of the economy and we want to try and help,” Ms. Kopel wrote in the e-mail. “Gift giving will be inevitable regardless of the state of the economy, so it might as well be as affordable and as painless as possible.”

Last Wednesday, Ms. Kopel had successfully wooed back the head of a Lower Manhattan dental practice who defected to Tiffany’s last year, and was busy preparing the order. “I called him and said, ‘[Tiffany’s] is a big chain and they don’t need your help. I do,’” she said. “And he came back.”

For good measure, Ms. Kopel also offered to cut the price of 18 Orrefor crystal ornaments from $40 to $15 each. She will have to keep up the pace through the New Year if William Barthman is to avoid laying off employees or further cutting back their hours.

A corporate employee at Gucci, who was shopping at their Fifth Avenue branch, said bargains were drawing customers to department stores in droves. “I was just at Saks the other day and it was incredible,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a madhouse, because you know their sales haven’t been doing that well so there is that extra 50 percent off.”

She insisted that though people are being a little bit more cautious this year, they are still willing to pay for that “little bit of Gucci.” “Everyone’s still buying,” she said, but when pressed for details about the merchandise being sold she slashed her finger across her throat to get me to turn off the recorder.

THERE ARE A FEW stalwarts in the luxury sector who refuse to cut prices. Eugene Venanzi, a bespoke tailor who owns the eponymous boutique on West 56th Street, believes in “holding true to your standard” whatever the climate.

“We never do a sale,” Mr. Venanzi said from what he called the Swedish, neo-classical boutique he opened three years ago. “You have to look at things from your focus. If you open a shop like this, you’re saying your long range is based on quality and exclusivity and the classicism of exclusivity. Our approach is classic. We’re not a Prada. We’re not coming out with a new design every four to six months. … For me to take a navy pinstripe suit that, let’s say, is $4,000 and make it available for $2,500, then replace it two months later and put it out for $4,500, doesn’t prove anything.”

So far, the “buy less, buy better” philosophy has “not been too bad,” he said. Venanzi’s ready-to-wear suits start at $2,700 and a custom-made one can run from $15,000 to $20,000. “It sounds vulgar,” Mr. Venanzi said, “but it’s true.”

Though their midrange clients who earn between $250,000 to $500,000 per year are being more cautious lately, plenty of longtime customers are still willing to splurge on a suit. About three weeks ago, for instance, an American who lives outside the city placed an $80,000 order that included a $45,000 topcoat made of the highest classification of refined wool, Vecunia.