Ms. Wolkoff in her Midtown office. (Emily Anne Epstein)

In the 31st-floor offices of SWW Creative, the walls are beige, the carpet is gray and the cabinets are standard-issue wood-grain. There’s no Eames armchair, no runway stills splashed across the walls, not even a lucite coffee table with a copy of Grace Coddington’s memoir. There’s not a flower in sight.

While fashion professionals are known to obsess over the color of their pens, SWW Creative’s offices are about as splashy as an insurance agency’s. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not concerned.

Ms. Wolkoff, who orchestrated Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center expansion, isn’t in it for Smythson notebooks or a pair of Céline fur sandals. She is an executor first and a fashionist somewhere further down the line, finding more satisfaction in a spreadsheet than an Avedon. Though she’s a front-row fixture and a special-occasion catwalker, she doesn’t scour the runways for her own closet. Instead, Ms. Wolkoff, who stands a statuesque 6-foot-1, prefers the simplicity of a uniform—Ralph Lauren is her everyday.

“The outside world thinks that Fashion Week is so amazing and so glamorous and so over-the-top,” said Ms. Wolkoff, who has been overseeing the twice-annual event since 2009. “Is it important to have celebrities there? Great. Is it important to have the athletes in the front row? Super. But the truth is, this is a business.”

And yet, by acknowledging as much—and reimagining Fashion Week as populist and business-friendly—she has rankled fashion’s artistes, who feel that recent changes have given the event a noticeable odor of commerce. Under Ms. Wolkoff’s tenure, corporate sponsorships have taken center stage in a lobby concourse that more closely resembles the Javits Center than the heart of couture. Also, for the first time, there are events for the public, in the form of fashion-art collaborations with Lincoln Center’s performance groups. It’s gone from a tent to a circus.

“Lincoln Center is amazing—they have amazing facilities, they have everything you could possibly need,” said Stefan Golangco, the communications director of progressive menswear line Asher Levine. “But our brand is also about being underground and being off-schedule and being a little bit ... maybe less commercial. [Showing at Lincoln Center] doesn’t feel unique to your brand, especially if you’re a small label. You kind of get lost in the shuffle.”

While Fashion Week may be a few days longer now and may feel bigger (the tents certainly are), the number of shows in its main hub hasn’t grown materially since Ms. Wolkoff entered the mix. The total number of designers showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week itself has remained pretty much the same—the big explosion has been predominantly offsite. In 2007, when Fashion Week was still at Bryant Park, 90 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week while 165 showed offsite. Last year, 91 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center and 231 showed offsite, according to data from the Fashion Calendar, a fashion event scheduler, and IMG.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Many of the designers opting to show offsite are looking for a particular sense of place; a mythology that matches their brand. “I always dreamed about being a part of Bryant Park, and when Fashion Week lost its location, I was really bummed about it. I lived for that moment,” said Nary Manivong, an emerging designer who has chosen to show his work offsite and off-schedule.

Of course, nobody can keep everyone happy, and Ms. Wolkoff is aware of that. She’s not interested in reclaiming defectors. She is interested in making sure the event goes off seamlessly.

“I stay in control of every little thing,” said the maestro of Post-it notes, corkboards and carefully stacked folders. “I want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If I could delegate a little better, I would be better off.”

She is well-known for indifference to the theatrics so often associated with fashion, calling herself an industry “Switzerland.” “There’s no drama,” Elle’s creative director, Joe Zee, told The Observer. “Whatever is happening behind the scenes, everything still feels very put together.”

Every detail is per Ms. Wolkoff’s design, said associates, one of whom likened her preparedness to that of a Boy Scout. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate to put my hands up in the air and say, ‘too bad,’ you know, or ‘It’s not my job,’” Ms. Wolkoff said. “There were times when I’d be sweeping the floor before an event if the floor was dirty. I wouldn’t wait for someone to come into the room and do it themselves.”

Ms. Wolkoff is known in the industry as “General Winston”—a name bestowed on her by Anna Wintour, a career-long mentor who tapped her to become Lincoln Center’s director of fashion when Fashion Week was pushed out of Bryant Park by an ice-skating rink. Ms. Wolkoff, who had previously headed the Vogue-hosted Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is credited with helping elevate it from an East Coast event to a star-studded couture pageant.

She is one of the many New York fashion success stories who owe their rise in large part to Ms. Wintour’s mentorship. Ms. Wolkoff was a client services manager at Sotheby’s when Ms. Wintour hired her to do PR for Vogue, despite her lack of fashion experience. Raised amid acres of farmland in the Catskill Mountains, the black-belt preferred working on her jump kick to reading magazines. “Fashion was not something that I knew about,” she said. “It just wasn’t really particularly interesting.”

But what Ms. Wolkoff did have was an intensely disciplined work ethic, which was solidified playing power forward for Fordham University’s Division 1 basketball team. The diligence of waking up for predawn practice drills developed a personal drive that became impossible to turn off. (To this day, she calibrates her schedule to the minute, opting to have a manicurist come in to do her nails at her desk so she doesn’t have to cut into family or work time.)

(Emily Anne Epstein)

And she looks the part. Described by an associate as “the first person you see when you walk into a room,” Ms. Wolkoff came equipped with Vogue-worthy family associations: her stepfather is Bruce Winston, jeweler Harry Winston’s son.

“I didn’t have quite the understanding of the difference between Vogue, Elle, Harper’s and the rest of the world,” Ms. Wolkoff said, recalling her interview at the magazine. She was hired the same day. “I knew Anna Wintour was the editor in chief of Vogue, I just didn’t understand what it meant to wait around to meet with Anna Wintour. I didn’t lie that I read Vogue every day or that I grew up loving fashion, but I did know how to roll up my sleeves and do whatever it took to learn it.”

In the cosa nostra of fashion, Ms. Wintour’s blessing is likened to being “made” by a mafia boss. The wheels are slicked, critics are silenced and success is imminent. Accordingly, Ms. Wolkoff’s ascent at Vogue was rapid; she jumped from PR manager to special events manager to the head of the Costume Institute Benefit.

“The Costume Institute Benefit became my baby. It was something that I lived, breathed, day and night,” she said. “It was all about excellence. It was all about never taking ‘no’ for an answer from anyone in order to achieve the ultimate goal.”

At Lincoln Center, Ms. Wolkoff expanded on the foundations laid by Fern Mallis, the founder of Fashion Week, whose efforts put American designers on the global fashion map.

“We wanted to compete with Paris and Milan and other world capitals. There was very limited international business coming to New York, because we weren’t organized,” Ms. Mallis told The Observer. One of the initiatives she pursued was corporate sponsorships that would help offset the costs of the runway productions.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Ms. Wolkoff nurtured those relationships, creating events that were open to the public rather than only buyers and editors, prying open the former fashion fortress and transforming it into a sprawling campus. “My goal was to put fashion on par with all the other cultural institutions that were at Lincoln Center,” Ms. Wolkoff said. “I always wanted to somehow democratize Fashion Week in a way that hadn’t been done before. I wanted to create a place where editors, models and designers could rub elbows with the everyday person.”

Some designers have balked at the new venue and the new vision, opting to take their shows elsewhere. Marquee New York brands like Proenza Schouler, Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang have all decided to sidestep Lincoln Center. “The feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s way more commercial out there. But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about,” Ms. Mallis said. “I certainly miss Bryant Park.”

Mr. Zee says that Ms. Wolkoff’s innovations have “matured” the biannual event. A self-proclaimed “fashion dinosaur,” he has been to shows at every fashion week, since long before they ever found a home at Bryant Park.

“I kind of love Lincoln Center,” he said. “She’s really made it into a true event. It’s not about going to a fashion show and leaving—she makes it into a true experience. It’s like growing up: Bryant Park was the teenage years, and now you grow up and you migrate uptown. It’s bigger, more glamorous ... it’s more what it is.”

At the end of the day, the models need to walk, the buyers need to shop, the editors need to see the season’s best and the designers need to sell their handiwork. It’s a trade show.

“If you look at who’s involved in fashion, there’s glamour, and smoke and mirrors, but it is a true business,” Vanessa von Bismarck, co-founder of fashion PR firm BPCM, told The Observer. “[Ms. Wolkoff] is someone with a business mind and [she] knows how the business works.”

(Mario Zucca)

In June of last year, Ms. Wolkoff stepped down as Lincoln Center’s director of fashion to take charge of her own company, SWW Creative. She still oversees the event, but now IMG and Lincoln Center are her clients, along with a number of other companies, including the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Penske Media Corporation and Kapture, an iPhone photo-sharing app.

Setting up shop privately enabled Ms. Wolkoff to dictate her own terms, which include being able to pick her three kids up from school and get home for dinner with her husband, real estate developer David Wolkoff. “I didn’t have children not to be with them,” she said. And even though her daughter Alexi has made the occasional runway appearance, she’s not an aspiring Tavi. “My children do not know the difference between Tar-jay and any other designer brand,” Ms. Wolkoff said proudly.

After bedtime, she typically dives back into work. “I go to sleep once I’ve put my third child to sleep, and I will wake up around 1 o’clock in the morning and work for a couple of hours, and then go back to bed,” she said, pointing to the 1,777 emails that had accrued in the past hour.

Once left alone, Ms. Wolkoff settled back into her seat and began riffling through the stacks of paper spread across her desk. She checked her iPhone and called out to her assistant. It was clear: she may be the first person you see when you enter a room, but she’s also the last to leave.

eepstein@observer.com

Smelly people. (PMc)

“It’s not like a lesbian movie—it’s a fun movie.” In retrospect, this conversation, overheard by The Observer Thursday night at The Hole gallery, may not have actually been in reference to “Intense,” the film collaboration for DKNY’s “Be Delicious Intense” fragrance championed by Beatrice Dupine, Veronique Gabai-Pinsky and Enrique Badulescu, but, frankly, we will never really know.

The somewhat spasmodic images of a beautiful blonde, mouth occasionally agape, biting (kind of necessarily, given the advertised scent) into a large green apple, that were projected onto nearly every surface of the gallery were certainly to blame for any potential confusion here. Words like “tense,” “bite” and “intuition” also kissed the walls. The rooms were packed full of surprisingly bad-smelling people, including Kelly Killoren Bensimon and Fern Mallis (though The Observer knows they smelled just fine), and most stared, if not at their phones, then at something else besides the images blinking around them. This further confounded the nature of the event and the film at its center.

Ms. Dupine, the project’s creative director of sorts, explained to The Observer in a thick French accent, flapping her hands constantly for emphasis, that Estée Lauder (the licensee for the potent mixture) had come to her to help develop an “alternative movie for the young.” She said that she went with “happiness” as its overarching theme, but also with wanting to “touch, grab and squeeze ... all of that.” However, if this is happiness, we wonder if the lovely Ms. Dupire is not secretly a pubescent boy. Estée Lauder spokesmodel Hilary Rhoda, slightly lost as to how respond, simply said, with unexpected humor and maybe even a little sarcasm, “Well, I love happiness!” when asked about this take. She was much more comfortable when we told her we really just wanted to ask about her boots, which where thigh-high Burberry. While visually interesting and (as described to us by another guest) socially “electric,” the event on the whole stayed rather confused. The Observer was reminded before leaving to “write about the Free Arts angle.” The charity (Free Arts NYC), on whose board of directors Gabai-Pinsky sits, was also to benefit from the event that evening, and, “happy” to take advice from a stranger, we did.

Matt Lauer(s)

The sweltering pre-summer heat has begun to settle upon our fair city. In the season during which New York’s every nook and cranny teems with sweaty tourists, true city folk gather their kaftans and swim trunks, and head for the hills. The sandy hills of Main Beach, that is.

Fetching our long-hibernating car, we were pleased to find it still filled with the detritus of last summer. A slightly deflated sunhat, a beloved pair of flip-flops, a tube of now suspect sunscreen. We smiled, remembering with sandy fondness of our time Out East. Yes, while the city has its undeniable boons, nothing can quite compare to the Talkhouse late, late on a Saturday night, nor the peculiar shock of seeing endless George Hamilton clones strolling the bucolic streets.

Suffering through city traffic, and the doldrums of 495, we finally emerged on Route 27 where droves of convertibles wove between the trucks, each unnecessary acceleration screaming, “I’m getting to the Hamptons faster than you, just watch!”

Practically suicidal after hearing “Call Me, Maybe” a full six times on the radio, The Observer lost reception and exited the highway where congested interstate turned to into congested country road. Memorial Day weekend in Southampton, was, as expected, crowded. Women in airy maxi-dresses appeased screaming children with ice-cream; teens shopped the Soho-esque boutiques; young beaus in bright, patterned (ducks, flowers, whales, anything) swimmies showed base-tanned thighs; South Fork natives, wearing indignant athletic shorts and T-shirts, eyed their summer prospects.

We drove to Cooper’s beach, that riotous stretch of ostensibly public coastline which demands a $40 dollar daily parking fee. Barefoot, we traversed the sand and took a dip in the still-frigid waters, officially baptizing summer 2012. Basking in a beach-chair, we noticed that while our season had only just begun (as evidenced by our sadly pallid skin), others already seemed accustomed to the littoral tableau.

Salty-haired kids were busy digging holes at the water’s edge, entirely oblivious to the cold. Umbrellas partially shaded a group of buff (guy) and coquettish (girl) lifeguards, making it difficult to parse the group’s surely brewing summer romances. Our reverie was cut short, however, when a young beachgoer, packing up for the afternoon, whined as he headed toward the parking lot carrying a beach chair. “Mom, is there any way to open the Mercedes trunk from your cell?”

Leaving the beach, we drove along the country lanes, peering at the houses.

As we drove up Elm Drive, a convoy of valets heralded our arrival at the Hamptons magazine fête.
“Happy Hamptons!” A chipper reporter greeted friends, awaiting the arrival of the magazine’s most recent coverboy, Matt Lauer. While Today Show host was running uncharacteristically late, his likeness was broadcast throughout the venue. Copies of the magazine were arranged on tables for guests to peruse, and purported VIPs (housewives, real and otherwise) posed alongside posters of Mr. Lauer’s boat-shoes-and-khakis cover shot.

Bobby Flay tried to skulk in unnoticed, but was promptly called back to the step and repeat.

Peter Brant Jr. was in attendance, behind a pair of oversize sunglasses as he posed for photos with friends. “Now lets see one with a big smile,” a photographer said, wishfully. But Mr. Brandt maintained is cool countenance.

Trying to talk over the incessant gum popping, we spoke to model Julie Henderson, who shared her thoughts on the Hamptons. “I’m a resident here, for the summer” she explained. While Ms. Henderson stays in Southampton, she assured us there was no inter-Hamptons rivalry. Still, she prefers her own enclave. “I just think it’s cuter,” she said. Moreover, Ms. Henderson believes most people have quixotic vision of Long Island, believing the hamlets to be unrealistically opulent.  “I don’t find it to be really luxurious, in a way that people probably that don’t come here see it,” she told The Observer. “It’s very relaxing. I can bike to the beach.”

Others, however, found the Hamptons have waned in recent years. “I would say in the past ten to fifteen years things have changed drastically here,” Fern Mallis said. “The influx of all these people form Wall Street and from Europe, and the amount of money that people are spending here,” she said, were reasons why the community was indelibly reshaped. “This used to be a place where all the artists and writers and everybody could come and work and afford to live out here, and it’s very difficult for them now,” she said.  “Farms are going and all the land is going, and it’s getting really crowded.”

In particular, Ms. Mallis bemoaned the Hamptons’s epicurean scene, and said she was most looking forward to simple dinners at her home this season. “It’s crazy going to the restaurants in the summer! You know I don’t do the, ‘Do you know who I am? Get me a reservation!’ trick.”

Still, she was confident that the Hamptons holds some intrinsic value that opportunists and hedge funders can not diminish. “It’s still a beautiful place. No matter what happens, they can’t change the light and the air and the color and all the special things here.”

At last, Mr. Lauer arrived, apologizing for his tardiness. Though humble and unruffled, he made it clear this was not his first rodeo. He smiled at the cameras, affably chatting with the wide-eyed press and answering questions from indiscriminate outlets. He discussed his family’s newly acquired Water Mill farm, and his dreams of turning it into an equestrian oasis for his wife and kids.

Mr. Lauer, however, does not ride himself. “You know, I love things like golf and I love things like tennis, and I watch people get banged up riding horses all the time. If I did it, I’d want to kind of do it peddle-to-the-metal, and I think I’d probably end up in a body cast,” he told us.

Looking down, we realized Mr. Lauer was wearing loafers without socks. It must be summer! “You know, even though we didn’t have much of a winter out here I’m still thrilled that the warm weather’s here,” Mr. Lauer said. “This is the time we look forward to all year.”

Too true!

editorial@observer.com

Two images from the Alexandre Herchcovitch show. (left: Jennifer Branken, right: Jessie Adler/Milk Studios)

As sartorialists make their biannual pilgrimage from New York to London to Milan to Paris, some veteran tent-dwellers still have a pebble stuck in their Louboutins from Lincoln Center.

The glossy editor’s anxiety over being edged out of the front row, it seems, has migrated over to the media riser and down to the pit. What was once the province of professional photogs, to hear them tell it, has been overrun by iPhone and iPad wielding bloggers who wouldn’t know a bounce flash from a zoom lens. And they’re hogging up the press passes for backstage beauty shots!

Shortly after they turned off the stage lights and sopped up the champagne, a handful of disgruntled photographers reached out to The Observer to kvetch. Slights ranged from being turned away from shows, to an errant iPhone interrupting their runway image, to discovering that the insolent photo-bloggers never learned the etiquette about getting your shot and moving on.

One accredited photographer, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of being “black-listed,” is even in the process of drafting a “letter of grievance,” calling it “my sort of manifesto, to explain to them what it is to be a photographer, if they choose to separate the bacon from the pig, so to speak.” (We wonder how well the fashion crowd will relate to a pork metaphor, however.)

Those who make their money through licensed images that go out to newswires and magazines, insist that it hurts designers to have Google Images flooded with subpar photographs that, literally, show their garments in a poor light.

What’s worse, experienced photographers moan, these bloggers do it all in “front-of-house” attire, with an attitude to match. “They’re dressed to the hilt and pull a point-and-shoot out of their Louis Vuitton,” said Jennifer Polixenni Brankin, a fashion and editorial photographer who has shot twelve seasons around the globe. “They’re just really kids who want to get into Fashion Week. We tapped one of the girls and was like, ‘Where is your camera?’ and she was unbelievably rude.”

Three years ago, the fashion press began noting, through gritted, gleaming teeth, how quickly an online following earned Tavi Gevinson and BryanBoy a seat beside Anna. Now, trained photographers, already circling the lower rungs of the Fashion Week ladder, find themselves competing with a contingent of kids who’ve never heard of color correction.

“I can’t speak for the brands but I hope they would care. They spend a lot of money to put out a fabulous show and that’s a significant investment and I hope they would want the very best photography and the very best pictures coming out,” said Fern Mallis, the renowned former senior vice president of IMG Fashion, best known for running New York Fashion Week for more than a decade. “Like I say, everyone who has an iPhone or an iPad isn’t a photographer. Nor is every blogger, a writer or a critic who has the knowledge and the history to edit, digest and communicate what the collections are about...”

But brands, given the choice between online eyeballs on the cheap and a beautiful glossy magazine shot want, well, both. “I had to take camera phone photos while I was taking actual photos for some of the shows I was at just because they wanted to put them on Instagram,” Los Angeles-based photographer Mark Luebbers said of the client who sent him to New York.

“We love, we love, we love glossy magazines. But the bloggers are reaching a different demographic, and it really is helping the reach of these designers,” said Flint Beamon, an expert in “back of house” management for PR Consulting. “It’s in the best interest that everybody tries to get along. Obviously this is not the case.”

Accredited photographers insist they just want more vetting—and their rightful place back. “I will not waste my company’s time if I’m on second or third row or in a back position on a riser, then I can’t give my agency a marketable image. My image is preset at a price based on what my agency’s expenses are including my salary. So they can’t give it away. I’m in jeopardy. We’re all in jeopardy,” said the photographer drafting the memo. (Paging 2007, says everyone in media.)

In prior seasons, explained Ms. Mallis, the media riser is typically filled with “Photographers who shoot for credible places” and people who are “grandfathered in because everybody knows who they are and they've been shooting for years.” The pecking order of the riser can be every bit as hierarchical as those rows of white chairs, with photogs using tape to indicate their spot—something bloggers may not have picked up on. “They have their own system and they figure out who sits where and who does what and that's part of the mix of the photographers’s pit. The conflict and energy you get with these gruff men and women on the media riser juxtaposed against the well-heeled audience is part of the experience of a fashion show,” said one PR insider, adding, “Ultimately these photographers from the agencies, most of whom are freelancers that get paid only when their images are used-I don't want to say have less reach-but they have a different kind of relevance than they used to in the past."

PR Consulting, the firm where Mr. Beamon works, represents MADE Fashion Week, an alternate to the IMG-run affair that was launched to support young designers in 2009. In a statement to The Observer, Made explained that bloggers are essential to reach what they claim is 11 million viewers through its digital platforms, noting, “Made does not grant access to any shows for specific bloggers, but rather representatives who capture content that is then aggregated to specific sites such as Tumblr, Milkmade.com, or the MADE Fashion Week app.” Ms. Brankin had a different theory, “It seems they’re in bed with Tumblr for Fashion Week,” she said

IMG, which runs the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, offered the following statement about its vetting process, “IMG takes the process of registering and credentialing of media seriously and continually updates these processes to be in line with current technology as well as best practices. We review the credentials of hundreds of new outlets each season and attempt to only credential those that are most relevant.”

Organizers from both camps also point out that PR firms for the designers themselves get to decide whom to invite backstage. Besides, the PR insider noted, failing to credential lower tier outlets just prompts them to get around the process by getting a badge from a B or C list designer, “So all of a sudden they're running around with just the backstage credential and we don't really have any sort of influence over their movements.”

Add to that the fact that old guard may not be as well-behaved as they think. “They hang out until the very last moment, until I kick them out normally. It’s not that they get their photography and they leave. That never happens. And if it does, it’s because they have another show to go to,” said Mr. Beamon

“It's clear that bloggers are a significant presence, but I'm not sure all of them are justified in their presence and their sense of entitlement and when they belong and how important they are,” noted Ms. Mallis, who recently discussed this issue with BryanBoy on her Sirius XM radio show.

Of course, she’s been proven wrong before. BryanBoy once tweeted out a link to his 233,000 Twitter followers, “Remember how Fern Mallis said "twitter won't bring orders for a designer"? well, check this wsj article out.” That was 2009.

-ntiku@observer.com

Other guests included Fern Mallis, Baroness Dini von Mueffling, Christy Turlington, Mickey and Leila Strauss, Jennifer Jones Austin and Bart Freundlich.

"Holy crap, it's Martha Stewart!" gasped Precious star Gabourey Sidibe at the premiere of the The Big C hosted by The Cinema Society & Showtime at Donna Karan's East Hampton cove-front home on Saturday, Aug. 7. "I like knowing how to make things out of pine cones," she said, explaining her awe.

Ms. Sidibe, who a plays a disgruntled teenage student on the show, had not yet acclimated to her surroundings. "I'm in some inn," she said.

The hulking craft queen, meanwhile, was attired in a silk, sand-colored blouse. "There's Donna!" she hollered, bulldozing forth.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," said Ms. Karan, whose Urban Zen Foundation co-hosted the event.

"Hi, Martha," designer Calvin Klein said kindly, but with slightly less enthusiasm than the hostess.

"I can't wait to see the house. I've never been here before,"

"You're kidding!" Ms. Karan said, "Oh, I'm gonna take you all around, honey!"

The wafting scent of citronella led guests up a curling path from the driveway to a wide teak deck covered in freshly mown grass (concealing a pool, it turned out).

Caftan-clad IMG Fashion honcho Fern Mallis greeted Halston creative director Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband, Matthew Broderick, as they sucked down soba noodles on a divan.

What does the couple, parents of three, usually do while at their Sag Harbor home?

"We wake up at the crack of dawn with our children and we never, ever, ever, ever go out," Ms. Parker said. "Never. And literally, it's Fawlty Towers, we have endless houseguests. It's been great, it's been a good summer."

At around 9:30 p.m., Ms. Karan was crouching at Mr. Klein's feet, back propped against the designer's knees. On the balcony of the house's second floor, Ms. Stewart photographed the scene below with her iPhone.

"A day," Ms. Karan said jadedly, when asked how long the party setup took.

All the upholstery and rugs were white; wasn't she concerned about spills?

"We don't think about it!"

Model Christie Brinkley arrived promptly, wearing a pale gray pencil skirt and matching motorcycle jacket. “We just drove in from the Hamptons right now, but it turns out everyone from out there is here!” she told the Transom. Outside on the patio, FIT museum curator Valerie Steele lit up a ciggie.

After guests were seated, Ms, Brown, her black turtleneck cinched at the waist with a leopard-print belt, clinked on a glass and said, “We all love Donatella. She is so stylish, so elegant, I don’t know how she stays looking so good and so young!”

Ms. Brown described Ms. Versace’s latest philanthropic effort, a partnership with the Whitney Museum’s Education Department, the One Foundation (an organization helping children recover from last year’s earthquake in China) and Starlight Children’s Foundation, which helps ill children in the U.S.

Quail was served. Author Jay McInerney dug purposefully into his, while the CFDA’s Fern Mallis took a more delicate approach. 

“I always meet so many fascinating people at Tina’s luncheons,” Ms. Brinkley said after petits fours. “You know I was tweeted about during lunch! Mika Brzezinski, I guess, has a large Twitter following, and she tweeted about me during lunch!” (Ms. Brinkley also revealed that she’s on Facebook.)

At the coat check, photographer Bruce Weber waited behind hotelier André Balazs. “It’s like a family reunion seeing her again,” Mr. Weber said of Ms. Versace. “We were just talking about the fun we used to have traveling together and how open people were back then and willing to take risks. I wish it was still like that.”

By 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24, a Divas Shop for Opera Shopping and Cocktails benefit for the New York City Opera, held at a "pop-up" shop on Madison Avenue, had turned into a fashion frenzy. Ravenous shoppers sprawled two floors, prowling the racks and grabbing Manolos, Louboutins, Dior frocks, and more. A dressing room even collapsed.

“This is always one of the best parties of the year,” said socialite and event co-chair Lorry Newhouse.  “More than money, it generates publicity, exposure. The real money is the people who create the exposure.”

But there was a lot of money changing hands. “It looks like there’s a lot of good stuff,” said socialite Gillian Miniter, scanning the room. “I see lot of people who look to be doing very well.”

One Birkin-toting shopper showed off the yellow eyelet Marc Jacobs skirt she had snagged to artist Chantel Foretich, who exclaimed, “That is fabulous. Fabulous! How did I miss that?” A Chanel tweed jacket sold for $125, a Chloé satchel for $350, and a Marc Jacobs quilted tote for $250.

Style legend Elsa Klensch took home a green pressed-leather evening bag and a black-and-white jacket. “I love jackets that go over black pants, black shirts,” she said. “It was Donna Karan’s way of dressing.” What do you mean was, honey?

“If you can shop and money can go to charity, it’s a win-win,” said 7th on Sixth director Fern Mallis.

Before she hurried off to Gen Art's 15th anniversary benefit, Real Housewife Alex McCord bought a leather dress. “People are always on the hunt for something new, and this is a less expensive way to do it,” she said. “And it’s also for a great cause!”

The petite Mr. Mendel arrived with a very tall and slender date that prompted one on-looker to whisper to her companion, "That is the tallest woman I have ever seen!" The designer said he doesn't get out to Lincoln Center nearly as much as he'd like. "I go sometimes to see the ballet because I love dance, but that's about it," he told the Daily Transom.

How did the designer feel about the new Fashion Week locale?

"It's a fabulous change," he said. "It's a place of culture so to have it associated with fashion is really exciting. Bryant Park was convenient because it was close to my office, but I don't think the location was ideal and I think the surroundings of the West Side and the arts is just an upgrade for the event."

Fashion Week guru Fern Mallis stood nearby. Was she already making mental notes for how to make use of her new digs?

"Yes! I see it all with completely different eyes," Ms. Mallis said of Lincoln Center. "I'm always looking at the space and trying to figure out out how we can use it, utilize it for some element that happens during fashion week."

Would the less centralized location, away from Times Square and the Condé Nast tower, change the generally manic mood of Fashion Week?

"This is still very central, actually," insisted Ms. Mallis. "It's easy to get down to the Garment District, meatpacking, and Chelsea. Also, Time Warner and Hearst publications are near here, so you know, some publications will lose and some will benefit."

As Ms. Mallis undoubtedly knows, during Fashion Week, the shortage of cabs near Bryant Park often leads busy editors, stylists and models to share cabs with one another.

Would Ms. Mallis get into a cab with a stranger for a discounted ride as part of the proposed cab-sharing initiative in New York?

"I would," she replied. "It's a great way to meet people and it's cheaper!"

Philanthropist Laurie Tisch, who sits on the board of Lincoln Center, has already been to Avery Fischer Hall four or five times for various events, including a gala where she was honored a few weeks ago. "It's very different," she leaned in and told Daily Transom.

We wondered if the chairwoman thought sharing cabs with strangers was a fun idea.

"Yeah! Especially with a single man? Yeah!" Ms. Tisch said excitedly. "I think someone should actually do a reality show about the relationships formed in the back of cabs."

The occassion was Mr. Niccolini's birthday—his 21st, if you believe the winking invite.

"Fifty-six, actually," noted the irreverent impresario, dressed dapperly as ever in a pinstriped suit and red tie.

So that's, what, 21 shots plus 35 shots?

"Absolutely, I think we should do that!" the good-humored Mr. Niccolini told the Daily Transom before turning to greet other guests.

WCBS-2 news anchor Maurice DuBois chatted with ladies by the bar, while Fashion Week organizer Fern Mallis snapped photos of the stylish crowd and gabbed about her new Bravo reality TV series, Fashion Show, hosted by Isaac Mizrahi.

The evening was more or less a prelude to the far bigger bash on Tuesday, May 5, when the illustrious restaurant itself turns 50. For real.

London's Financial Times recently attributed its longevity to "consistency, charisma and the peculiar nature of power and celebrity."

A full roster of prominent New Yorkers, including Blackstone Group's Pete Peterson, hotelier Jonathan Tisch, and domestic diva Martha Stewart, are lined up for a "classic comedy roast" of the owners, Mr. Niccolini and partner Alex von Bidder.

Yes, it's payback time for Mr. Niccolini, who seems to thrive on giving his power-broker guests a good ribbing from time to time.

"If you haven't been insulted by Julian, you are a nobody," as one financier by the unfortunate name of John Holmes recently told New York magazine.

“It could be bad," Mr. Niccolini predicted of the roast, in an interview with The Observer's Eight-Day Week. "It’s very easy to dig up dirt on people these days. You just Google people's names and there you have it. Thank God I've only been married once."