Amy Sacco at No. 8.

Suppertime is a strange point in the evening to be sitting at No. 8, the Meatpacking nightclub that is approaching its one-year anniversary. It’s a place where one usually ends up near the end of a marathon bender, when a mix of fashion and music industry ingenues mingles with the occasional movie star over ear-shattering disco.

At around 8 p.m. on a chilly night last week, a small and starving (and sober—for now) group of guests arrived at a strangely quiet No. 8, audibly chattering about the possible arrival later on of Ryan Gosling and his girlfriend Eva Mendes after the New York premiere of their new film, The Place Beyond the Pines. But that’s not why everyone had showed up so early.

“We have great music and great nightlife,” No. 8’s chef, Anthony Russo, told the crowd. “But we also have great food.”

Indeed, if club-hopping models happen to want sustenance beyond champagne, the food is quite good. On this night, Mr. Russo was showing off a new springtime menu; the dishes included tuna tartare, buttery grilled cheese and lobster tacos, an admirable attempt to make up for the brisk air outside. Some warmth was needed.

Presiding over the meal was No. 8 partner Amy Sacco, the remarkably tall and commanding nightlife fixture who owned and operated the now-shuttered legendary celebrity hangout Bungalow 8. Its de facto replacement, though owned by LDV Hospitality, clearly borrowed the palm fronds and carefully arranged booths from her former place.

She approached our table, reached out to shake the hand of one diner and promptly knocked over a glass, shattering it and jolting awake a lulling conversation that mostly covered unseasonably cold weather.

“Mazel tov!” Ms. Sacco exclaimed.

We congratulated her on the new menu, but couldn’t help but wonder: do people actually eat at a club that’s become known as one of the glitziest place to be in NYC after 2 in the morning?

“You know No. 8 differently,” Ms. Sacco told the Transom. “You can come early, order a lot of different things, then you can decide to stay and party, or you can go home.”

Speaking of staying and partying, we asked if Mr. Gosling would actually show up at No. 8 later that night.

“Oh, who knows? I don’t know,” Ms. Sacco said, with a sly grin. Then she whispered: “But I am best friends with his girlfriend.”

When the meal was over, the disco lights turned on. The jury was still out as to whether Mr. Gosling would make an appearance. But either way, it was definitely time to party.

On the eighth floor of Saks on Oct. 20, CFDA president Steven Kolb hosted a party for his organization’s American Fashion Cookbook, now in its second printing, though Mr. Kolb admitted: “If we were to do a recipe quiz with all the designers in the cookbook and asked them to make it, I don’t think they would pass.” And himself? “I’m good at opening a tub of hummus and a package of flatbread,”

Servers walked around with samplings of the food in the cookbook: Victor Costa’s Vidalia Onion Crustless Tart; Lilly Pulitzer’s Key Lime Mojito; Jeffrey Banks’ Eleanor Banks’ Meatloaf.

“That’s my recipe!” Ms. Banks, Mr. Banks’ mother, said, taking a big bite of the meatloaf.

“My favorite since I was a little kid,” Mr. Banks said proudly.

Diane von Furstenberg, host of the event, showed up later than the other designers. Her recipe for Saturday Night Chicken is included in the book. “I have it every Saturday night,” she told the Transom. It was hard to tell if she was kidding.

“Two minutes on each side and you’re done,” Elie Tahari said of his grilled lamb chop. “That’s the only thing I know how to do.” A server rushed over with a platter of Mr. Tahari’s lamb. He gave a cautious laugh and a thumbs-up, then waved his hands at the food.

“No thanks,” he said. “I ate at home.”

Two nights later, at Cipriani Wall Street, Barneys creative director and Observer columnist Simon Doonan emceed the Fashion Group International’s 26th annual Night of Stars, whose main drama was actress Eva Mendes’ bumping into a waiter, causing him to drop a tray of Champagne to the floor.

“It’s a fun night,” said designer and honoree Michael Kors, on his way to get a drink. “To have a fun night and get an award—that’s just the cherry on top.”

Actress Emmy Rossum—at the ceremony to support her friend Paula Wallace, who received the Sustainability Award—was waiting at the bar, wearing gold Donna Karan. “Fashion events are a lot of pomp and circumstance,” she said. “But this one has some substance.”

She received a Bellini. “Tell me that’s not frickin’ awesome!” she exclaimed, sipping it.

After a loooong cocktail hour, singer Gwen Stefani presented the Beauty Award to Catherine Walsh; R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe mumbled his way through a Corporate Leadership Award presentation to his friend Renzo Ross; and pop rocker Jon Bon Jovi presented the Humanitarian Award to shoe king Kenneth Cole.

Designer Francisco Costa sent out his models looking like futuristic newborns: wet hair in minimalist ponytails, bodies glistening with baby oil. They wore neutral-colored dresses in high-textured fabrics that had a predisposed shape entirely different from that of a woman's figure.

Afterwards, reporters surrounded Ms. Mendes to find outwhat she thought.

"I love the colors," she said. "I like that kind of coral one and the chartreuse one. I just think it was an elegant, easy, beautiful collection."

But is it something she can see herself wearing on a red carpet, someone asked? "I think, you know, there's ways to  work around things," she replied. "The things that are sort of see-through, you can always add a slip under without messing up the integrity of the dress or the intention that Francisco wanted. So yes, there's always a way to make it red-carpet right."

Someone else asked about Ms. Mendes's experience shooting the black and white campaign for the fashion house, in which she and model Jamie Dornan lay around in their underwear.

"I mean, being lathered in oil from head to toe and try to pretend that that's normal--that's always a little strange," said Ms. Mendes. "But it was wonderful and I couldn't be happier with the results."

Ms. Mendes had come to support her dear friend, Calvin Klein women's wear designer Francisco Costa, who was receiving an award that evening from the design school along with CK CEO Tom Murry and New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn.

"He's not only a very kind soul, which is very important to me, but he's also very good at what he does. He always makes me feel like I'm wearing a piece of sculpture. Like this," said Ms. Mendes, tugging at the side of her dress to show off the unusual texture and shape. "It's so feminine but it's also such a great little piece of architecture." (Ms. Mendes will be wearing one of Mr. Costa's creations to the Met Costume Gala on Monday, May 4.)

Ms. Mendes said she never had an interest in attending design school herself. In fact, she said she dropped out of college to pursue acting. "I just don't like saying that because I don't like other kids to get encouraged by that," she said. "It just worked out for me, but stay in school, kids!"

Mr. Costa was optimistic when the Daily Transom asked him to offer some advice to design students coming out of school this spring into a fashion industry plagued by folding fashion labels and poor sales. 

"I hope they'll be better than me!" he joked.  "My advice is very basic—it's being creative in the best sense. That's the greatest part about being a designer or being in a creative field because you can really manage the situation a little more freely, in a more fun way. We have an advantage because we're working in a creative business and designers have antennas on, they're connected to how people live and what they wear. My advice is just to keep that going."

The designer was coy when asked whom else he may be dressing in addition to Ms. Mendes come Monday. "We have a couple of people," he said.

Bergdorf Goodman fashion director Linda Fargo was also not too worried for today's young talent. "I might worry if my dream is to be a huge finance guy right now, but the world always needs beauty and creativity," she told the Daily Transom.

Parsons fashion dean Simon Collins said that his graduating students may actually have an advantage graduating at a time like this.

"I find them incredibly optimistic," he said. "They are smarter than ever and they know they have to be. They've seen which companies are falling and which are staying stronger, so they're trying to understand what keeps them strong and they're trying to adapt that themselves."

Phat Farm's Russell Simmons, who arrived with his girlfriend, model Julie Henderson, also seemed to have some helpful advice.

"A level of fearlessness is the most important thing for people so bent on achieving that next thing. You have to enjoy the process," said Mr. Simmons.

The rap mogul did not attend design school, but he said that so many of his executives have that he didn't really need to. Still, the Daily Transom wondered if Mr. Simmons made any clothing when he was just starting out that he would be embarrassed to show now.

"I actually make embarrassing clothes every season," he said. "Especially in my new Argyle collection. I'm reviewing it now and we've edited some of it. I saw some stuff when the samples came back and I was embarrassed that I made it. We had these puffy vests but they're made out of a seersucker. They're very light, but I think we just used the wrong fabrics."

Nearby, all the attention seemed to be turning on an odd foursome that had arrived minutes before the actual dinner and fashion show was about to begin: the socialite Olivia Palermo, Gossip Girl actress Amanda Setton, and Marc Jacobs and his boyfriend, Lorenzo Martone. And even as it was time for everyone to take their seats, the masses of flashing bulbs and eager onlookers hoping to meet Mr. Jacobs seemed to put fashion students, faculty and guests into a giddy mood. 

Diane English’s The Women, from her own screenplay, is supposedly based on George Cukor’s 1939 adaptation by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 Broadway play. Both the 1936 play and the 1939 movie were funny in a bitchy, misogynist way. Luce was said to have loathed New York society women, and enjoyed ridiculing their fetishes and foibles. Ms. English’s strongly feminist take on the material divests the comedy of all its humor. Actually, Ms. English’s new version of the 1930s artifact has more in common with the warmly womanly wiles of Sex and the City than with the acid wit of the original version of The Women. Indeed, one wonders why Ms. English chose to depict this particular narrative of conjugal love betrayed at least momentarily as almost a tragedy for a woman when divorce is so much more common today on and off the screen than it was 60 years ago.

The casting of Meg Ryan in the original Norma Shearer role of the aggrieved wife, Mary Haines, is not especially outrageous in itself. But whereas Shearer’s character never worked a day in her life, Ms. Ryan’s character maintains a part-time career as a designer for her father’s clothing store. (This in addition to such perks as a beautiful home in Connecticut, an adorable 12-year-old daughter, and a Wall Street titan of a husband). Still, the biggest change from the original is the casting of Annette Bening as Mary’s best friend, Sylvie Fowler. In that role, Rosalind Russell was a scathing delight as a shameless gossip and a farcical provocateur. She is certainly no friend of Mary’s.

Ms. Bening’s Sylvie, unlike her jobless predecessor, is the high-powered editor of a celebrity magazine, and is forced to betray Mary to save her own job by placating a valued contributor to the magazine. The contributor’s speciality is all the dirt on Wall Street marriages. Not to worry, Mary and Sylvie eventually make up and Mary regains her husband, who gets over Eva Mendes’ Crystal Allen, the department store’s perfume spritzer girl. Ms. Mendes is too transparently vampish to be as magical as Joan Crawford was in that role in the original.

Ms. English has her feminist heart in the right place, and she mixes races and sexual predilections to populate Mary and Sylvie’s circle with possibilities that the lily-white straight damsels of the movie ’30s never imagined existed.

This contemporary broad-mindedness is admirable, but not sufficient to compensate for the lack of comic friction. This is to say that as much as I enjoy current actresses like Ms. Bening and Ms. Ryan even in a lost cause, I cannot recommend the latest reenactment of The Women as anything special.

asarris@observer.com

Diane von Furstenberg is teaming up with the Andy Warhol Foundation to create a resort 2008 and pre-spring 2009 collections of swimwear and other pieces featuring the artist's prints. [WWD]

Eva Mendes is pleased that her topless video ad for Calvin Klein has been banned in the U.S. (And yes, click through to see the titillating video.) [The Sun]

Freshpair.com is taking its underwear campaign to Times Square tomorrow, featuring a fashion show and cocktail hour with host Lydia Hearst—who has a thing for being snapped in her underwear—and guest Tyson Beckford. [WWD]

Kate Moss is Naomi Watts's style icon. [Vogue UK]

Times UK explains why normal people shouldn't try to copy Agyness Deyn's pixie cut. [Times UK]

First Women's Wear Daily reported that television networks were refusing to air the provocative ads for the perfume starring Eva Mendes whispering something about having a very sexy secret. Then, last night's celebration in honor of the launching fragrance—which was perhaps doomed from the start when it was scheduled to take place at 421 Broome Street, the site of Heath Ledger's death—didn't exactly work out.

Instead of Eva Mendes and her entourage welcoming them, guests were greeted by police sirens and scrambling publicists, according to The Cut. It seems that Calvin Klein's PR team was faced with a similar problem that plagued the infamous Hamptons gallerist: The building was considered a residence and lacked a permit to accommodate a party, sending guests, photographers, and models into the rain.

The party was then rumored to have been moved to Barolo on West Broadway, where only a select few were allowed to enter. Ms. Mendes never arrived.

One of the publicists was reportedly overheard saying, "We're going to get a lot of bad press from this."

At least they saw it coming.