The lawsuit between Naomi Campbell and her former maid, whom she reportedly attacked, has been settled. [NY Daily News] 

Valentino and his longtime business partner Giancarlo Giammetti have been hit with a $39 million fine for tax evasion. [WWD]

Popping one's collar "can create a curve around the back of your neck that frames your face nicely and makes your neck look longer -- with the added bonus of minimizing jowls and double chins." [WSJ]

Bill Murray reportedly purchased a pair of turquoise Valentino stilettos, black Jimmy Choo espadrilles and gray Miu Mius in a size 6. [P6]

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.

Worlds collided!

From Broadway, Cheyenne Jackson! ("I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family, so we weren't allowed to wear costumes for Halloween. When I turned 21, I dressed like a slutty boy scout every year.")

From post-minimalism, Jeff Koons!

From the blogosphere, Cory Kennedy!

From the edge of your bathtub, Vidal Sassoon!

From Gilded Age New York, Albert Hammond Jr., accompanied by Agyness Deyn (who, it must be said, looks and acts exactly like recent victim of sex addiction Téa Leoni.)

And from that movie—no, that one—Kate Bosworth. What was she wearing? "What am I wearing? What do you think?!"

Good answer, because at that moment—8:15, give or take—Mr. Lagerfeld himself was making his way cadaverously to the party. Surround by seven or eight men and boys, he caused even the usually well-behaved print press to storm over the barricades and gather around as he held court on the issues of the day. The wind picked up again, swirling leaves apocalyptically.

So who's better dressed, Obama or McCain?

"I don't make political statement. I am not an American." Touché. He was dressed, as it were, like Karl Lagerfeld, which is to say in clothes comically unflattering for a man of Karl Lagerfeld's age and morphology; up close, the delicate cut of the leather motorcycle gloves and the structural rigidity of the satin piping on the jacket could do little to mitigate the utter profanity of the ensemble. He is, in the end, still a man, with liver spots.

There was a curious notch of black on the back of his pressed white collar. Must be "detailing."

Ms. Hadid, perhaps the most consequential Iraqi exile since Ahmed Chalabi, came shortly after, wearing shiny, spandex-y tights, among other sartorial reappropriations. She said little before ducking inside. As one of the young event coordinators explained earlier, "You know she's an artist, so she can be difficult."

Soon everyone who was anyone, and the reporters too, would be inside, where the neo-disco band Hercules and Love Affair would sing and dance and saxophone in a venue built to look like a vitrine. Over in the uterus proper, Sarah Jessica Parker would try to get a male friend-handler to stick a camera in some art to snap a picture for her; nearby in the same room stood fellow alpha-blonde Miuccia Prada, as well as, single-white-female-style, Kim Raver, the would-be S.J.P. from Lipstick Jungle.

Before leaving the carpet, though, the press steamed and fumed over the non-appearance of Blake Lively and Penn Badgley. What, they decided the InStyle party would be more edifying?

Eve, the rapper, did deign to show up, and was a soothing presence. Some findings: Her favorite Halloween treat is "candy corn, of course." In the taking-care-of-herself department, "I'm a bath girl. … I don't get the massages as much as I should." Moreover, nutritionally, morning protein is crucial. "I'm not really a lunch girl."

She loves Chanel, because it's designed for all sorts of women. What do you think of Zaha?

"I don't, but I'm interested in finding out."

Somebody on the red carpet asked Ms. Eve something about something having to do with red carpets.

Her reply was worth noting: "They say if you smile—" Pause. "If you smile, then you're happy, right?"

Still bloody and inky, the pain in the hand was gone.

The pieces inside the mobile museum come from origins as international as the trip’s itinerary. The Russian arts collective Blue Noses submitted a collection of boxes with a series of satirical handbag videos called “Fifty Years After Our Common Era or Handbags Revolt.” Sylvie Fleury of Switzerland created a mammoth model of a handbag lined with pink fur and containing a TV rolling clips of women firing at handbags. Other sculptures, photos, videos and installations come from France, India and elsewhere.

The Central Park Conservancy will receive a payoff “in the low seven figures” for hosting the slick behemoth, and the city will be paid a “use fee” of $400,000.

Eminent London architect Zaha Hadid told The New York Times she likes that the “Mobile Art” structure “lands, creates a buzz and disappears.” To infinity, and beyond!

Yet, an ongoing court injunction prevents the owner from leasing out the now-vacant 400-square-foot space and may further cause the owner to default on his mortgage, according to court papers.

Ownership of the building changed hands in July -- barely one month before police seized 1,820 counterfeit handbags and wallets valued at $93,000 from the store.

On prior occasions, beginning in June, undercover cops bought an alleged Coach wallet ($20), two alleged Chanel handbags ($55 each), and an alleged Gucci handbag ($30), court records show, and also made several arrests.

An attorney for the building's new owner, who purchased the property for more than $8 million, stated that his client "had no actual or constructive knowledge" of the illicit sales until cops served him with a restraining order in August.

Moral of the story: always ask to view any hidden compartments before buying the building.

ready-to-wear line in October 1998, it seemed like an apocalypse for a

generation of fashion designers. A plucky downtowner with an outsize

personality, and the son of a New York

garment wholesaler, Mr. Mizrahi, 39,  was part of a cadré of designers

attempting to translate lower Manhattan street

style for the Madison Avenue lady. He was a creature of 1990's marketing whose

name became a household word with the 1995 documentary, Unzipped . Then he lost his patron, and a month later his comrade,

Todd Oldham, announced that he, too, was closing up shop.

Mr. Mizrahi is still reeling from those bad times. He's

pursuing a year-old $30 million lawsuit against Chanel and its subsidiary,

American Fragrances Inc. (he charges breach of contract and wants the rights to

his name back), and he has publicly licked his wounds in an autobiographical

off-Broadway one-man show and cabaret act, LES

MIZrahi .

But for the last two years, Mr. Mizrahi-an invention of the

fashion world-has been doggedly trying to reinvent himself.

This fall, his talk show will debut on the Oxygen TV network. And, with

architect H. Thomas O'Hara, who has collaborated with Robert A.M. Stern, Mr.

Mizrahi is helping to design "superluxury" pieds-à-terres

on West 42nd Street, just

down the street from Bryant Park, where he used to romp on the runway.

"I don't know why, but this project just really appeals to

me, because I can do it and say to the world that I did it on my own," said Mr.

Mizrahi on Aug. 2. "My show on Oxygen is just another example of doing exactly

what I please. That's the only way I can live my life is to do exactly as I

please. And opportunities arise and I have to take them."

But Isaac Mizrahi, Act II, causes him a certain level of

anxiety nonetheless. "I always say, 'How does a woman get pregnant for the

second or third time?' Somehow God endowed her with this forgetful nature, so

she forgets how hard it is. In fact, I keep taking these projects on, and I am

able to just forget how horrible it is until the last second. And sometimes

they're beautiful children, or sometimes they're horrible drug-addict children

who assault their parents."

For his new baby, Mr. Mizrahi sees "a beautiful prewar

limestone-a little bit of the Plaza on 42nd Street

… a beautiful sort of limestone residence building on the Park

Avenue of the future. It'll have all those luxury proportions of

prewar, so I'm kind of enthralled with the whole thing."

Then he draws back a little: "That's what it looks like in

my head."

Actually, the  red-brick exterior of the 1927

building at 113 West 42nd Street,

between Sixth Avenue and

Broadway, will remain intact. Mr. Mizrahi is charged with making over the

inside into 26 small studio and one-bedroom apartments, two per floor, and just

for fun-and lots of money-a triplex penthouse. This includes designing the

architectural finishes: appliances, hardware, windows, floors and lighting. The

total budget on the renovation is about $8 million. The developer, Mitchel

Maidman, will be charging from $700,000 for a 900-square-foot studio to $8

million for the triplex-that is, once he settles a bitchy 30-year-old battle

with the Durst family over ownership of the building.

But the Durst situation

is Mr. Maidman's challenge. Mr. Mizrahi's challenge is more personal. "I'm not

approaching this different from the way I've always approached designing anything,"

said Mr. Mizrahi. "Whether it's a dress or a stage set, it's all the same

thing-it's very classic thinking and problem-solving …. It's like I've trained

myself in a certain way. I don't claim to be designing this building; I claim

to be solving the problem of the building.

"This building, for instance, is small. It's a piqued kind

of a situation, and everything I do I get slapped with more fire codes, so at

one point I decided all the walls will be glass in the lobby," he said. "It's a

playful scene; it's kind of like walking into a light box! And you'll see

through the walls."

Also in the lobby, he said, "I'm sort of struggling with the

idea of a terrazzo floor. I sort of can't do without that-it's so the luxurious way, and in the middle

of the century it was everywhere."

The upstairs is petite also. There, Mr. Mizrahi set out to

create "two little, tiny places [per floor] that should be extremely

luxurious." But here, he had a muse to work from: the pied-à-terre buyer, "businessmen coming

into town every couple of weeks."

There were also light issues. "I think the most luxurious

thing about the apartments is the modern way they're being laid out. It's all

in the math. In the end, it's all in the math." For instance, "there are three

front windows and four back windows and you're thinking, 'How can we get a

bedroom with light in it?' And that's all I think design is, because I'm not

Parish."

Mr. Mizrahi will refit those windows with single frames and

no moldings. "That's not design-that's just the kind I like best."

Good light makes a good-looking room, and so on, said Mr.

Mizrahi. "They have depression problems in Sweden.

They design all this beautiful furniture, and they sit

around in it depressed because there's no light …. I think like in the 1930's, people

looked so good because in a room people were the important thing, and they were

more important than the furniture. Look at [the restaurant] La Grenouille. The

best thing about that place is that everybody looks so beautiful in that

restaurant, because the lighting is considered.

"This is a residence. You'll want to look really cute before

you go to work and really good when you come home and look a mess from a long

day. If you want to call that design, then go ahead."

Because he will also get to furnish some of the apartments,

Mr. Mizrahi gets to shop, too. He's using a different palette for each

apartment-depending, of course, on the kind of light it gets. In any event, the

furniture will always be Knoll. Mr. Mizrahi has been smitten with the mid-century

modern staple since he inherited some pieces from his "crazy Uncle Sam."

His inheritance now furnishes Mr. Mizrahi's own "small,

one-bedroom" apartment in a Bing and Bing–designed building on West

12th Street. "I bought the apartment, and I was a

little worried because it wasn't enormous," he said. "It had southwest

exposures. I was very nervous." So he hired apartment architect Ross Anderson,

who also designed Mr. Mizrahi's studio, and learned a lot in the process. "You

have a small place, and all you have to do is make the bed and load the

dishwasher and it looks great," he said.

In the end, Mr. Mizrahi can't explain his style as an

interior designer. "The design personality that comes through is really just

the skewed way that I think," he said. "I tend to have a very lopsided vision.

People sometimes don't like what I do, but I'm not that scared of critics. I

like to be liked, but it's more important for me to do what I want than to be

favorably reviewed.

But he obviously enjoys trying on lots of new hats. "There

are people who do jobs for praise and money," Mr. Mizrahi said. "Check my bank

account, darling-I don't do these things for money."

Mr. Lagerfeld, who recently renewed his contract as the designer for Chanel until at least 2003, held court at a large round table and received a visitor the afternoon of Dec. 9. He removed his sunglasses and opened a wood portfolio. Inside were the nudes he had photographed in his Paris studio this summer for Visionaire, the limited-edition art and fashion journal, published in time for Christmas (about $95). Photographed in color negatives, then printed on black-and-white paper, the pictures are elegant and alive.

"Nothing freaky. Freaky was only amusing for a while," said Mr. Lagerfeld, whose passion for photography over the past decade has become as significant to him as his fashion design.

For Visionaire , there's Demi Moore, Rupert Everett, model Kristen McMenamy pregnant and Amber Valleta, among others. A handsome French soldier. A joyous Linda Evangelista showing her scars from lung surgery. A certain Paris fireman. The actress Julie Delpy. "It's called the 'drop dead,'" Mr. Lagerfeld said, describing the diamond fixed under the foreskin on another proud subject. Mr. Lagerfeld did not include a self-portrait. "I've taken my picture in the past, but I'm not my favorite subject."

"I waited for your call," cooed a British woman whose rose-shaped tones could launch a thousand Merchant-Ivory projects. Amanda Harlech, the young, aristocratic muse for Mr. Lagerfeld's millennial Chanel, had arrived. She greeted Mr. Lagerfeld at the table, then slouched girlishly in her chair.

Lady Harlech, wearing black, sparkled like sable in sunlight.

Mr. Lagerfeld explained he had lunched at Jayne Wrightsman's. Oscar and Annette de la Renta were giving a dinner that night.

"Fun is not the word," Lady Harlech enthused, talking about the previous night's Costume Institute gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art honoring Gianni Versace. "It was the greatest party."

"It was a great mix, no?" Mr. Lagerfeld added. His rapid sentences regularly conclude in multilingual question marks. Strangers might feel the need to answer. They shouldn't.

"But I was shocked by one thing," Mr. Lagerfeld continued. "Madonna saying in her introduction of Donatella that Donatella slips diamonds into her pocket. She can say, if she likes, that Donatella gives her diamonds, but to say she 'slips them into her pocket' makes it look like Donatella is buying friendship from some singer, no? This ruined my evening. And she looked like a housewife. Nothing. No style. This was over the borderline, huh? She'd better make a good record."

"But it was also a very touching, moving speech," said Lady Harlech. "Madonna meant well."

"I'm not sure she meant well," said Mr. Lagerfeld. "She's a very rude person."

"I think we should just leave it," Lady Harlech said, looking in the journalist's direction.

"I think I'll send something diamond, something expensive to Donatella for Christmas," Mr. Lagerfeld finished.

Lady Harlech smiled. She will spend the holidays with her children at the Mount, the ancestral Harlech house in Wales. "What would you like for Christmas, Karl?"

He didn't know.

"Someone to put your houses into perfect order?"

"Impossible," said Mr. Lagerfeld, who has places in Paris, Monte Carlo and Biarritz. An avid reader, he employs a librarian full-time just to keep his books sorted.

"Christmas is coming on a very bad day this year," Mr. Lagerfeld said, sounding almost wounded. He and Lady Harlech are in the middle of preparing the Chanel couture collection, to be shown on Jan. 20 in Paris. "I should go with Ingrid Sischy to Elton John's in the south of France, but Christmas is a horrendous day,'" he explained. "We must work. But Wednesday, the 24th, we cannot ask people to stay late, the 25th is a legal holiday, and Friday will be impossible to get anyone to come to work!"

Lady Harlech laughed. She rolled her eyes.

Mr. Lagerfeld shrugged. Sat up straight again. Regarding the couture collection, it was "still a little early to say what we are thinking about except the theme is: no references. Because there's too much fashion parade these days. It may end up a little differently. For the moment, over the door is a sign that says 'No references.' The idea is to make it modern."

"I have a meeting," interrupted one of the Chanel ladies, softly bidding Mr. Lagerfeld so long.

"Everyone has a meeting," the designer responded. He rose and kissed the woman goodbye. " Courage, " he said. French was spoken. Everyone was speaking French now like so much spun sugar.

Mr. Lagerfeld was 12 when he came to New York for the first time. He stayed with his parents at the Waldorf-Astoria before traveling by train to Chicago and the West Coast. "It was the American dream come true," Mr. Lagerfeld recalled. "New York was like Chagall meets Walt Disney. It was another world in 1950. But never complain, never compare."

Mr. Lagerfeld's father, a Swedish entrepreneur who lived in Germany, made his fortune selling his condensed milk company to Carnation. Seven years before the Lagerfelds' trip to New York, they were evacuated from the bombing of Holstein to a dairy farm in the countryside, where Mr. Lagerfeld was mesmerized by an 18th-century-style painting of Frederick the Great that hung in the farmhouse. Its scene of a court dinner in the rotunda at Sans Souci launched his dream of fashion. At 14, he was sent to art school in Paris. At 16, he and Yves Saint Laurent both won prizes in the same fashion contest. One of the judges, Pierre Balmain, offered Mr. Lagerfeld his first job.

This year, Mr. Lagerfeld consolidated his varied business affairs and licensees, stopped designing for Chloe and put his Lagerfeld line on hold, while continuing to design for Fendi and Chanel. "My new formula is to open the Lagerfeld Gallery," he said, explaining the Rue de Seine emporium that will sell his exclusive fashions, favorite books and exhibit his photographs. "Andrée Putman is designing the space, and it's supposed to be ready in March, but Madame Putman is a little slow, you know," he laughed.

Mr. Lagerfeld once said he came to fashion "a wolf among lambs, but I'll probably leave out of boredom. But I'm still not bored at all because of the way my photography gives me such satisfaction and affects my view of fashion."

Wouldn't Mr. Lagerfeld make a dream professor? "I tried it once in Vienna. A class in fashion. I hated it," he said. "I'm only here to learn, not teach."