Martha Stewart.

Help feed New York’s hungry and dine with entertaining mogul Martha Stewart at City Harvest’s Ninth Annual “On Your Plate Luncheon.” Ms. Stewart is the guest speaker (no word yet on whether she will offer brownie-baking tips), and co-chairs include Gillian Miniter and Topsy Taylor. Society columnist David Patrick Columbia of the website New York Social Diary is the honorary chair, and City Harvest’s vice president of external relations, Patricia Barrick, who is retiring this year, will be honored.

The Metropolitan Club, 1 East 60th Street, (212) 838-7400, 12pm-2pm, individual tickets from $375, tables from $5,000.

Sorry, did we say investigate? We meant  "snapped some photos as he was walking by" before speculating on a trend story about a new "fashion" (wrong word but right idea) among some young people—including college students well housed in dorms and apartments here in downtown Manhattan—who did this panhandling/begging as a kind of lark."  (The logic here is that this lady is a hipster in disguise, and not, as one might assume, just a pregnant, homeless person who hasn't gotten around to updating their sign yet.)

Evidence of this prince/pauper trend Columbia asserts in his post—which then seamlessly (not seamlessly) transitions into party coverage of Hilary and Wilbur Ross' penthouse event to address real poverty and honor Citigroup's Vikram Pandit—includes readers sending in photos of young panhandlers with "new" looking sneakers and expensive glasses frames. Also, the guys are way too clean-shaven to actually be homeless. Hipsters are the worst, right??

The issue is that Columbia and the rest of the upper crust just care too much, allowing these young con artists to make marks of  "us who empathize" with the plight of the actual poor-poor. (Empathy now defined not by how much money you give, but how many photos  you can snap at the homeless with your iPhone before heading to penthouse events honoring bank CEOs).

Maybe David should go back down to Bergdorf's and confront the faux-pregnant woman, Michael Moore-style, demanding that she expose herself as the NYU student she actually is. Then he could make her donate all her panhandling proceedings to Accion International, c/o Pandit and the Ross family.

God, the nerve of the nouveau-riche poor.

"I mean, look at Mrs. Astor at the Met and Mr. Kahn at the Met," the 69-year-old said, speaking of two of the Metropolitan Opera's great Gilded Age patrons. "Two different people in terms of their interest in being there and what it meant to them. His was actually more sincere because his was actually, shall we say, visceral, and hers was more social, though his was probably social, too. But he was actually affected by the art in such a way that he got off on it, while she got off on being there and being the queen. Both of those elements made the opera last."

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It's not just opera--Mr. Columbia said that motives are similarly mixed at the ballet and museums--but, in the end, the whys of giving don't much matter. As Mr. Columbia said: "You have people who acquire money and then acquire the accoutrements of money, which is the interest in culture, or apparent interest in culture. I don't know how sincere it is, and that's O.K. From my point of view, if someone gives money to support the opera, I don't give a shit if they're not really interested. If they just want to sit with Mrs. Whomever, that's O.K. with me. You know, Mr. Frick and his museum, it was good for the artists, even if there was something else in it for him."

But now, when even the rich find themselves prioritizing their spending, their motives may become a lot more important. Someone who is giving out of passion for the art form--Sybil Harrington, the Metropolitan Opera's major patron of the '80s and '90s, comes to mind--may prove hardier than someone who's in it for other reasons.

More than genuine passion, perhaps those other reasons--self-creation and image management among them--are the truly compelling ones. A recent email, criticizing the superficiality of his society coverage, made Mr. Columbia think of David Koch, the richest man in New York and one of the city's most prominent philanthropists: His $100 million gift to New York City Opera and New York City Ballet led to their theater taking his name.

"This is New York," Mr. Columbia wrote on his site, a place where "Society" and its cultural institutions are hardly irrelevant. They provide a playing field for moneyed people to achieve power.

"I wrote about how I knew him and what he's done with his life, the evolution of his life since I've known him," Mr. Columbia said over lunch, "and I've known him about 20 years now. He's basically set up this public image that we call his life over that period of time. And now I can see that he's done it somewhat deliberately and carefully with the intention--I could guess his overall intention is, like with a lot of people, political. Because he's gained political power. By his cultural interests, he softens the edge of that objective. It doesn't look so venal, greedy and ambitious. It looks communal and cultural, and therefore legitimate."

As recent profiles made clear, Mr. Koch has indeed used his cultural philanthropy to "soften the edge" of his less publicized political activities. It is a reminder that there are multiple dramas playing out in these institutions, not all of them onstage. Opera may not be the compulsory activity it was for the city's upper classes in the days of Edith Wharton, but it remains an arena where more complex battles are fought. Every major gift and every person recruited to join a board (and every person rejected: Mr. Columbia spoke of the financier Saul Steinberg, blacklisted from the Metropolitan Museum's board, largely because he was Jewish) means something: an attempt to befriend or outman someone, a move in a larger game.

"What happens in all the philanthropies," Mr. Columbia said, "is that people get involved through different channels--being recruited, wanting to know somebody--and lots of times they do become converted. They realize how important it is. They go to the performance, they see how people are responding, they see how great this is, they see how much better off the world is to have this. They start taking on more noble ideas of what they're doing, which makes them feel better about themselves. Not a bad thing."

That Mr. Koch's gift was to City Ballet and City Opera, and not to the Met, was a statement. A huge gift to the Met would have offended other people, including, perhaps, the Basses, who give heavily to the Met and are active in the Republican political circles Mr. Koch seems destined to dominate.

"That's not superficial," Mr. Columbia said. "That's what society really is, at the end of the day. The stuff you see, the Mrs. Astor stuff, is very froufrou, but the subtext to that is not froufrou at all."

From Mr. Columbia's perspective, the motives of the next generation of arts donors are uncertain; they might be passionate givers, or they might be consumed by position and power. One thing is clear: These young people won't necessarily come from the same old families. Those traditions are fading.

"Now what they look for on the boards isn't their own children to follow suit," Mr. Columbia said, "but just someone who will. And also who has wmoney. 'Cause that's it."

High birth, in other words, doesn't mean as much as it once did. Speaking about a young patron whose family has long been associated with the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Columbia said, "He will not be on the board unless he has a lot of money to bring to it. He just won't be."

That leaves a vacuum that can be filled by people whose money may be newer--arts institutions are making a point of cultivating a much more diverse group of donors--and who, with few connections to generations of New York society, are doing it with their own reasons and to their own ends. For better or worse, though, these people make the show go on.

"David Koch has given a lot of money to a lot of cultural activities," Mr. Columbia said, "and it pays a lot of people, it keeps those dancers on the stage, it keeps the curtain going up. And you can't say he doesn't mean it. It doesn't fucking matter if he means it, because the dancers need to dance! That's all it is. That's what goes on."

editorial@observer.com

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David Patrick Columbia of New York Social Diary reports that Mr. Ford "breezed in" alongside Kammy Moalemzadeh, the managing director of Arcadia Investment Partners. (Senator Gillibrand has been spotted there, too.)

"[S]everal people went up to him as he entered the restaurant, stopping him right by my table. It was all about would-he, wouldn't-he?" Mr. Columbia wrote.

The society chronicler and the would-be candidate had met there the summer before. Mr. Columbia's take? "He still looks like a kid, an innocent."

Mr. Vola and his fiancé, Jennifer Lee, a real estate broker in Manhattan, didn’t sleep that night. At 7:15 that morning, they drank Red Bulls and excitedly drove the hour and a half from Sayville to the Hamptons to look at how their little magazine was doing. They hoped to see someone picking it up. Maybe even reading it.

When Mr. Vola and Ms. Lee arrived in East Hampton, all the magazines were gone. It was the same situation in Bridgehampton and Southampton. Mr. Vola, a large, bald, friendly-faced man who grew up in East New York, reading about high society in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, was thrilled.

“I was like, ‘Holy cow, we got really well received!’” he said. “Everyone must really like it!”

Then one of his writers, Tony Vargas, stopped by the Southampton Inn—the hotel’s new restaurant, OSO, was reviewed in the issue—and was told that someone had come in and picked up the stacks of Hamptonite. Mr. Vola started hearing the same thing from store clerks in East Hampton.

“You see where you dropped your magazine there?” one told him. “Well, who’s there now?” The stack of magazines contained the June issue of Social Life, with Rolling Stone scion Alexandra Richards on the cover. Mr. Vola’s distributor, Keith Husain, who works for Green Heart Trucking, told The Observer that he had noticed a “dark blue or black van” with an older gentleman at the wheel following him around while he was dropping off the magazines, but hadn’t thought anything of it.

Clearly, Mr. Vola had no idea what he was getting into.

THE FREE SOCIETY MAGAZINES THAT YOU'LL find in wire baskets outside Book Hampton in Southampton or Tiffany and Co. on Main Street in East Hampton—Social Life, Hamptons, Hampton Sheet, the recently defunct Hamptons Style (published by Dan’s Papers) and even Mr. Vola’s Hamptonite—are like the jostling little cousins of Town and Country and W. They all look pretty identical, with gushy profiles and page after page of flattering party photos. They also reflect the very thing that society likes to impose on itself: a certain caste system. Which is perhaps why so many of these magazines have managed to co-exist: If you increase the number of party pictures, more people can get into them. And the only people who find that objectionable are the ones who remember when getting attention was a more elusive thing.

“They’re kind of like yearbooks for the summer,” said socialite Minnie Mortimer (sister of Topper; sister-in-law of Tinsley). “You flip through and you’re like, ‘Remember that?’ And then you see everybody who was there.”

“It’s the first thing people look for when they come to town,” said Cristina Greeven Cuomo, the editor of Niche Media’s Hamptons and its city counterpart, Gotham. “They’re looking for their friends, they’re looking for themselves.”

“Every Hamptons publication during the summer is very important because that’s what everyone is reading,” said Lizzie Grubman, the publicist (whose SUV-powered brush with infamy eight years ago isn’t likely something you’d read about in any of these publications).

But what, exactly, is everyone reading? 

On a recent Thursday, the society chronicler David Patrick Columbia sat down at his corner table and ordered a beet soup and two cobs of buttered corn at Swifty’s on the Upper East Side. The waitress brought over his usual iced tea without asking. “I got my eyes done,” an elderly lady in a pastel green suit and straw hat was telling her lunch companion at the table nearby. “Twice!” Mr. Columbia nodded hello to her.

Mr. Columbia moved to New York in the early ’90s. He took a job writing a column called New York Social Diary (now his Web site) for Quest magazine; then edited Avenue, its competitor; and in 2001 returned to Quest and Q, Quest’s quarterly fashion offshoot, with the honorary title of editor in chief. (Elizabeth Meigher, the daughter of publisher Chris Meigher, technically runs the daily operations at Q, and Georgina Schaeffer is executive editor at Quest.)

The formula for a society magazine, according to Mr. Columbia, has always been rather simple: a social column and a generous dose of party pictures at the front and a couple of profiles in the back. Quest and Avenue, Mr. Columbia asserts, are the authentic society magazines because they are put together by members of the world they cover.

“The Meighers, for example, are part of the New York and Palm Beach society,” said Mr. Columbia, who himself grew up middle-class in Massachusetts. “Elizabeth and Georgina grew up in New York and went to private schools here. All their friends belong to this world.

“With the great bubble of prosperity, you had all these aspirants to that world,” Mr. Columbia continued. “But since they are not part of it, they’ve actually created their own world—a satellite world which they call society, which it absolutely is not. They’re trying to create a hierarchy based on publicity, which is something that follows hierarchy—it doesn’t precede it.”

And he is not optimistic about the aspirants’ chances.

“They’ll be wiped out,” said Mr. Columbia. He was sinking his teeth into the buttered corn. “They’re almost all going to go.”

WHEN THE OBSERVER FIRST REACHED Justin Mitchell, the publisher of Social Life, to ask about the case of the disappearing Hamptonites, he said the fledgling magazine came out and folded. (“Of course he’d tell you that,” Mr. Vola said later.)

Social Life’s editor is a thin, pouty-lipped young woman named Devorah Rose, who has had guest spots on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York and NYC Prep.

“The whole sabotage rumor is hilarious,” Ms. Rose said. “Because literally we were so busy planning a dinner, hand-holding our talent and hosting an event that there is no time to sabotage anyone else!”

The day Mr. Vola found his magazines stolen, Ms. Rose and Mr. Mitchell were indeed preparing to host a soirée, at Solé East in Montauk. The magazine maintains two estates in the Hamptons: one in Watermill, where the parties take place; the other in Southampton, where they put up the advertisers that come to the parties.

“It’s completely fabricated—a total lie,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Vola’s story. He suggested the incident might’ve been concocted to get attention from Page Six, where it was duly reported the week after.

“It was like Olivia Palermo versus Tinsley,” Ms. Rose chimed in. “They were trying to Olivia Palermo us!”

Yet John Wegorzewski, a press representative for the Southampton Inn, confirmed that a few hours after Mr. Vola’s magazines were dropped off, the hotel’s employees noticed them missing, replaced by copies of Social Life. He added that a colleague later reported copies of Hamptonite found in Sag Harbor and Southampton dumpsters.

Whoever is responsible for this malfeasance, it’s just the latest twist in a larger narrative of competition that has long existed among society magazines. 

Joan Jedell, a former commercial photography agent, has been snapping pictures of celebrities, billionaires and their wives in the Hamptons for almost 12 years for her magazine, Hampton Sheet.

“I am a survivor!” Ms. Jedell told The Observer. “There are so many copycats. I was the first person who started the whole thing with the party photos, and then Jason Binn bought Hamptons magazine and now he believes he took over.”

One time, Ms. Jedell ran into Mr. Binn on the steps of a store in East Hampton.

“He always kisses me hello,” said Ms. Jedell. “But then he slipped my magazine into his as if to say, you should dissolve into mine.” (Mr. Binn didn’t recall doing this.)

Still, she holds Mr. Binn in higher esteem than the most recent arrivistes. “Social Life doesn’t interest me,” Ms. Jedell said, “because it’s like, ‘Who are these people?’”

Another new magazine, she thought, just smelled bad. “Like maybe it was mosquito poison.”

Ms. Greeven Cuomo, sister-in-law of Andrew, detached herself from the fray, but did remark: “The problem with the other ones is there is no regularity. Is it every month? Every other week? It’s very confusing.”

She told an anecdote about the actress Drew Barrymore getting shot for the cover of Gotham, then requesting to be on the cover of Hamptons instead.

“I said, ‘Ha! O.K.!’” Ms. Greeven Cuomo said.

According to Ms. Grubman, who admitted she is a “dear friend” of Mr. Binn’s, the taxonomy of these magazines goes like this: Avenue, Quest and Q feature an older society set and the many charity balls they attend; Hamptons and Gotham are more celebrity-oriented but still devote a fair amount of pictures to society; Hampton Sheet is mostly party photos; Social Life is younger and covers a sector of society that is more aspirational; and Hamptonite, well, it’s not clear yet.

One of Ms. Grubman’s clients is the model Jessica Hart, who was on the cover of Social Life’s June issue.  She did not suggest Ms. Hart as a feature to Mr. Binn.

“It depends on what level of celebrity they’re at,” said Ms. Grubman of her pitch process.

ON A RECENT SUNDAY, Minnie Mortimer was at a dinner in Montauk to celebrate the fall collection of her clothing line. Kelly Bensimon, an editor at large for Gotham and Hamptons, was also present.

Ms. Mortimer proclaimed the two society magazines her favorite. “Cristina grew up here so she really knows everybody and not just like studied them and knows who they are,” she said. “She’s friends with so many people that she really understands the vibe and the feeling of being out here.”

Indeed, Ms. Cuomo is not just an editor—she’s also a subject, this month on the cover of Avenue, her ostensible competitor, which lists socialite Debbie Bancroft and Lacey Tisch-Sidney as contributing writers. Socialites Barbara Bancroft and Gillian Hearst Simonds are contributors to Q. Social Life has publicist Kristian Laliberte listed as an editor, but then ranks his social status inside. Hamptonite’s cover girl, Ms. De Lesseps, is a contributing writer. And—perhaps taking their cue from Vanity Fair—Ms. Cuomo’s Hamptons has Christie Brinkley and Katie Lee Joel; Gotham Damon Dash and Judith Giuliani.

“When Pamela [Gross, Avenue’s editor] asked me to be on the cover, I asked her, ‘Don’t you see this as competition?’” Ms. Cuomo recalled. “And she said, ‘No, we only cover society. You cover affluence.’”

What does that mean, exactly?

“Affluence is someone with money and the means,” Ms. Cuomo replied. “Society is a very exclusive, elite group of individuals who do or do not have the means and carry the weight of tradition and family rooted in the community.”

There are, of course, advantages to having a magazine that is written by the very people it covers. Earlier this year, when Tinsley and Topper Mortimer were rumored to be splitting up, every New York publication immediately requested a Tinsley profile. The only magazine that got it was Avenue.

“Tinsley Mortimer is a very good idea,” said Mr. Columbia. “She’s a good-looking girl in a classic sense—she’s the blue-eyed, blond white girl. And now, she’s been around long enough that they also assign personality to her about her marriage and her husband.” 

Of course, in this economic climate, even magazines shot through with blue blood are experiencing red ink.

Advertising for Mr. Binn’s magazines is down more than 30 percent, and there were recently layoffs at Niche Media.

As for Mr. Vola: The fate of Hamptonite’s second issue, scheduled to come out Labor Day weekend, is still uncertain; he’d like to find a private investor but doesn’t know where to look.

“I try not to think about it,” said Mr. Vola, who is still working as a plumber. “I’m not going to give up. I put everything I have into it. I’m hoping that by next summer it can turn a profit. But for right now, I just hope it pays for itself, because I am not a bottomless pit.”

ialeksander@observer.com, jkoblin@observer.com

What animal did he have the most in common with?

"A lion," Mr. Stern said without hesitation. "Because my Hebrew name is 'lion'. My name is Leonard, the lion-hearted, from medieval times?  So I kind of fell into it for lack of a better association when I was a kid."

Mr. Stern admitted to talking to his cat all the time.

"I tell him to stop bothering me and scratching up the furniture," he said. "But I have a good relationship with animals. I used to have a pet supply company. Hartz Mountain, right." (We knew that because for one thing, we used to help mow his vast, endless lawn in the Hamptons and almost got fired for going into his pool house bar for some ice.)

Does he think of animals as his equals?

"My wife would be very upset with me but I believe we're superior to every other living species in the world," Mr. Stern said. "We're the top of the food chain. Animals aren't as aggressive as human beings. They only kill when they have to eat. I mean, you wouldn't have any of this genocide or Holocaust or wars in the animal kingdom—they don't kill for the sake of rage, only when they have to eat. I mean, the most ferocious lion will only kill if it has to eat and the most ferocious human being is a mass murderer."

We showed him a list of billionaires—what kind of animals were they like?

"I'm not going there. I know lots of these guys and there's one thing you don't want: a bunch of billionaires really angry at you. Some are real predators. There's very few pussycats among them."

James Gardiner, a tall, WASP-y white-hunter-looking guy, was standing by a pet-able alligator. The anthropolgist and novelist (The Lion Killer) panned the crowd, and "chimpanzees" came to mind. "They share about 98 percent of our DNA," he said. "I've seen them in Uganda and they're exactly like us. They're very vicious. This guide was telling me, every single chimpanzee here, all these males have killed other males, they're really like us. They're tough but not as tough as New Yorkers."

By a strokeable Arctic fox, we spotted exotic bird Georgette Mosbacher, who was wearing a pink Donna Karan dress, pearls and carrying a diamond-encrusted solid gold purse with a gold lion on top. She was talking to Cornelia Bregman, wife of Serpico and Scarface producer Marshall Bregman. Both women love their dogs.

"Guinevere, she's my baby girl," Ms. Mosbacher said of her King Charles spaniel.

Ms. Bregman went on about her Shih Tzu she rescued from the ASPCA but Ms. Mosbacher pounced and took over.

"My little girl has a total vocabulary, no, she really does," she said.

"They understand like one or two words, like come, sit, stay, let's go, toy—

"—Guinevere knows a lot more than that. My friends tease me because I can be on the phone with them and then she comes into the room and gets into something, and I start talking to her like a human being and they're like, 'Georgette, who are you talking to?' I go, 'My dog.' And I know they think I'm a little wacky but I do, I talk to her."

"Me, too," Ms. Bregman added.

"I say, 'Do not chew on Mama's shoes!' and 'Stay out of the closet!' And she understands, she'll stop and she'll whine and she'll let me know—and when I put cream on on, she likes to lick the cream off my legs."

"Oh, that's cute."

Just off the legs right? we asked.

"Oh, no, she'll lick the cream off anywhere it is! It's just easier to get your legs."

Ms. Bregman said her dog is never alone because he suffers from separation anxiety.

"We take him out every night, he's in our car and then our driver takes him back to the house and feeds him and walks him," she said. "He's purple, by the way, and has manicures and pedicures. I take him to this place in Los Angeles called Olympic Dog Grooming and they dye his tail and his ears purple! And he's called 'the Prince' in our building. And when we get in at night, I take off my shoes and say, 'Car-ry the shoe!' And the little prince goes prancing about and he carries the shoe and he loves to carry the shoe. And when he goes for 'walkies' outside during the day, he takes a toy with him while he does his business. He carries the toy for his walk! He's so proud of it. He's so grateful. He's been given a second chance."

"You know what they say in Washington, if you want a friend, get a dog," said Ms. Mosbacher. "It's still an absolute truism. My dog loves me and is smiling no matter what. I can yell at my dog and she still smiles back at me. She's a higher being than I am by far. I really want to come back as my dog. I think she's got it all figured, what life is all about and true happiness."

After Ms. Bregman said Sarah Palin looked most like a little pug ("with her doggie hair"), the women went their separate ways.

Ms. Mosbacher said she thought the former VP candidate was more like a focused and graceful gazelle. "If I had to pick an animal, probably an eagle," she said. "Well, because an eagle soars above."

On her way to see the snow leopard, the Republican fund-raiser and operative recalled the time she was bitten by a cottonmouth.

"I am basically fearless, but I was in my backyard in Houston, it was January, and all of a sudden I felt something just prick my ankle and I looked down and saw the fang mark and then it hit me a second time," she said. "I've been robbed at gunpoint and wasn't as traumatized. I could not move to help myself, I was frozen in fear."

Fortunately, the snake had been hibernating, its venom was all viscous, couldn't really flow, so all that was required was a tetanus shot.

Ms. Mosbacher squealed at the sight of her friend Carl Bernstein and after they caught up, we asked the legendary investigative journalist what animal he most resembled.

"Cats!" he said. "I have a cat and I talk to her all day. She gets up on my keyboard and types. I'm independent like a cat."

Had he ever had a bad experience with an animal?

"Yes, with my own cat! My son Jacob brought his beautiful dog Miles to visit, and I decided to introduce Miles to the cat. I was holding her and she proceeded to hiss, went at me with her claws in the face, there was blood all over the place and the next day my hand started to swell up and I had to go to Southampton Hospital because I had cat-scratch fever, from my own cat!"

Mr. Bernstein said Punkin is the greatest cat and superior to him.

"She runs the joint," he said, before checking out our list.

"Obama's definitely a cat. Bloomberg is a troubled animal right now. Gates is a bear but kind of between a big bear and a koala bear. Soros and Geffen, they're Jewish bears. ... They're all meat eaters, serious carnivores."

It was dinner time now. New York Social Diary's David Patrick Columbia looked lost in between two rows of tables.

"I think I'm most like a horse, always running, nervous, sensitive," he said, then took a quick look at our list. "Blomberg's an elephant—they have a long tail. Bill Gates, kangaroo. Looks like he hops a lot. David Koch, a goat. Listen to his laugh. I always say Wilbur Ross is a cat, a cheshire cat. George Soros, a monkey. Warren Buffett, a porcupine. David Geffen, an iguana. Ron Perelman, a porpoise. Steven Rattner, T. Boone Pickens, crows. Carl Icahn, giraffe. Henry Kravis, a penguin. I think there are a lot fewer billionaires here. Ersatz billionaires. This is definitely a jungle. I gotta figure out where the fuck I'm sitting."

Country singer Kellie Pickler is a bit of a skirt chaser.

“I think it’s sexy,” the platinum blond 22-year-old former American Idol contestant told the Daily Transom. “I think it’s great. Real men wear kilts!”

Ladies, not so much! Ms. Pickler wore a non-plaid Gwen Russell-designed red gown to the “Dressed to Kilt” fashion show, organized by the Friends of Scotland and hosted by the hilly country’s reigning king, the actor Sean Connery, at the M2 Ultra Lounge in Chelsea on Monday night, March 30.

Mr. Connery, who himself sported a kilt for the same event three years ago, was noticeably hiding his still-sturdy 78-year-old stems this time around.

The Daily Transom was stunned to learn that the famed Scot has never actually worn the traditional man skirt in any of his movies, a secret the original James Bond divulged as he zipped along the red carpet. (Turns out, the actor George Lazenby was the only 007 to slip into a kilt on screen.)

“I’m going to be shy and wear my underwear,” said 21-year-old actor Ed Westwick of Gossip Girl fame, a self-confessed kilt virgin, prior to his maiden bare-legged voyage down the catwalk.

Mr. Westwick was joined on the runway by fellow actors Andie MacDowell and Mike Myers, among others, who strutted their stuff in front of a panel of judges that included New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia, former Project Runway contestant Laura Bennett, and restaurateur Angus McIndoe, a legitimate Scotsman!

Before her catwalk, Ms. MacDowell informed the Daily Transom of her deep Scottish roots, which dated back to at least the 1700s, when her ancestors were lords of a region called Galloway (look it up).

But had she ever worn a kilt? No. Her young daughter wanted to. "But she wanted it to be short,” the matronly Ms. MacDowell said. They wore full-length dresses instead.

Alex McCord, co-star of the Bravo series The Real Housewives of New York City, came clad in a short-length tartan dress that she has proudly owned since the age of 19. It still fits!

Her husband, Simon Van Kempen, on the other hand, does not possess a similar predilection for Celtic fashion. He doesn’t own a single kilt.

That doesn’t mean Ms. McCord didn’t enjoy the evening’s ample views.

“As long as the man wearing the kilt has good legs, I am very happy to look,” she said, “especially if there is a gust of wind.”