Nigel Barker.

Hosts Nigel and Cristen Barker, Russell James and Donna Karan will be at the Fourth Annual Solving Kids’ Cancer Spring Celebration this year honoring Ms. Karan’s BFF Bonnie Young and daughter Gabby Karan De Felice. The committee includes supermodel Helena Christensen, socialite Jennifer Creel, Carolina Herrera, nightlife queen Amy Sacco and photographer Kelly Klein, to name-drop a few.

583 Park Avenue, (212) 583-7200, cocktails 6:30pm, dinner 7:30pm, individual tickets $600, tables $6,000-$25,000. 

Helena Christensen.

Kipling, the bag mostly favored by backpackers and European tourists, is upping its image via supermodel Helena Christensen. The brand, which uses a monkey as a symbol, is unveiling its debut Fashion Week ’13 collection starring model/photographer/jet-set bohemian Ms. Christensen with a fancy cocktail party on the now-warm Gramercy Park Hotel rooftop terrace. Expect Ms. Christensen’s pals like movie star Liv Tyler and Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir to be double-kissing the Danish diva’s cheeks all night.

Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue, (212) 995-1330, 6pm-8pm, by invitation only.

Helena Christensen and Liv Tyler. (Dustin Wayne Harris/PatrickMcMullan.com)

“The clothing’s just the sprinkles on top.” So said tattoo artist Ami James, and it could have been the motto for the evening, especially when the chocolate-sprinkled cupcakes appeared later on, one last treat for a collection of self-proclaimed oddballs, from Michael Stipe to Bono’s wife, Irish business woman Ali Hewson, to a late entry looking like the boy next door, Josh Hartnett.

They were gathered last night for the launch of the “Eccentrics Issue” of Vs. Magazine, which coincided with the official opening—or, anyway, the celebrity opening—of Paul Gerard’s Exchange Alley, the two events hosted by brunette beauties Liv Tyler, whose face in close-up stares from the cover of the new Vs., and Helena Christensen, who took the photo.

Mid-Fashion Week, and celebrating a high-end fashion magazine for the fashion-forward and runway-ready, the event was still somehow an escape from the frenzy, a respite. Yes, fashionistas and models mingled with artists, designers and rock stars, but the party was low key compared with the Marc Jacobs soirée on the same night.  The atmosphere at Exchange Alley, a restaurant that already feels local and loved, was one of nonchalant chic. The décor chimed with the night’s theme, black-and-white Hollywood studio shots matching the grayscale (splashed with pink) magazine cover. Mr. Gerard’s cooking, myriad different dishes with an Ottolenghi palette, also fit. The chef confessed to a Jack Kerouac fetish and modestly described himself as a potential eccentric, “more than your average Joe.”

Pity the poor eccentric. Quirkiness advertised runs the risk of cancelling itself out—after all, what could be more commonplace than clamoring for attention? To catch a glimpse of naked oddity one had to peek from unexpected angles, the only way to register, for instance, the tattoo of a cat on the ankle of Cobra Starship’s Gabe Sapporta. Mr. Sapporta, appropriately enough, was engrossed in conversation with Ami James, arguing that to be eccentric meant “never having to think about what it means,” never having to reduce it to a “label.”

Ms. Hewson said she knew “a lot of eccentric people who look totally normal,” and that it was “harder to find a normal person than an eccentric person.”

In this crowd, certainly, a cast of characters chosen not for fame but for quirks. There was a lot of Gaga talk; think eccentric, think Lady Gaga? Not quite. The point of the issue was not staged eccentricity but rather eccentricity as badge of dedication and passion. Mitchell Feinberg—Bronx-born still-life photographer and favorite eccentric of both Jakob F. S., editor-in chief and creative director of Vs., and Vibe Dabelsteen, the magazine’s fashion director—said, “the best eccentrics are those not extravagantly but thoughtfully so.”

Mr. Feinberg’s two photo shoots for Vs. saw conceptual art deal with the disposable: In one he plastered perfume bottles with powder, in the other he drilled a Patek Phillipe with a bullet fired from a .22 caliber rifle. He said that to be eccentric meant “to look at the world in a different way to everyone else.” According to Ms. Dabelsteen, Mr. Feinberg’s way of looking involves “caring about the finest details—that’s what makes him eccentric. Eccentricity and perfection are very close.”

If there was a queen of quirk, it was Colette. This multimedia artist, pioneer of the living art performance, pre-Cindy Sherman, describes herself as a “true New York eccentric”—the fact that she was born in Tunisia and grew up in the South of France sealed the deal. She had no compunction about wearing her weirdness on her sleeve—or rather her head. Her oversized black-and-white hat matched the décor and threatened to dominate it.

And the eccentrics’ most admired eccentrics? A tricky decision; in the worlds of art and fashion, choices are limitless. There was a vote for Salvador Dalí, for Andy Warhol, for Christopher Hitchens, for Diane Pernet, and—Ms. Christensen’s favorite—a “walking piece of art,” the recently deceased Anna Piaggi. Mr. Sapporta chose his girlfriend Erin Fetherston, “because in her spare time she’s a unicorn.”

As was rumored, Michelle Obama is indeed on the cover of March issue of Vogue, wearing a magenta Jason Wu dress. The photo was taken by Annie Leibovitz at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, where the first family stayed right before the inauguration. [WaPo]

Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick appears in a racy spread with model Helena Christensen in the new issue of Harper's Bazaar. [Harper's Bazaar]  

At his show on Feb. 19, Project Runway winner Christian Siriano will debut his line of accessories and footwear for Payless. [WWD]

Alexander Wang is reportedly designing a line of condoms for Planned Parenthood called (ahem!) Proper Attire. The line will be available exclusively at Thompson Hotels properties. [FWD] 

Agent Provocateur has unvelied a new ad campaign featuring Helena Christensen as a pirate. [PopSugar]  

Defying the rules of a recession, Zara has signed a lease on a 15,000-square-foot space at 1963 Broadway between 66th and 67th sts., where the company will open a store in the spring. [WWD]

Victoria Beckham was a no-show at the New York City Marathon on Sunday. [Racked] 

Bruno, the character adapted by Sacha Baron Cohen during Milan and Paris fashion weeks, reappeared again in Los Angeles over the weekend marching in an anti-gay marriage rally. [Vogue UK]

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.

Lorenzo Martone, the Brazilian advertising executive best known as Marc Jacobs' strapping boyfriend, arrived with a man who was not Mr. Jacobs. "I'm friends with Helena and I'm really curious to see what her charity initiatives are, I'd like to be part of it. So that's my first contact with her... with charitable Helena!" he explained.

Mr. Martone sat front-row at Mr. Jacobs's well-received show during Fashion Week after arriving hand-in-hand with stylist Rachel Zoe. "I was surprised, because I knew more or less what it was going to be about, but I still had a very emotional reaction, which I think is what fashion should be about," he recalled, in a thick accent. "Bring emotions to people... I was really, really happy with the results. And hopefully everyone!"

He hadn't seen many of the clothes beforehand. "They keep everything secretly until the very end," he said.

Mr. Martone went on to clarify that this hadn't exactly been his first Fashion Week: "I work in advertising for a lot of fashion clients, so I more or less knew how it was. I've never been so close to Fashion Week... so it was a little overwhelming." (He works at Chandelier Creative for clients like Old Navy and the Waldorf, he said).

But though the couple had been snapped aboard a yacht off Formentera over the summer with Kate Moss and her daughter, there would be no illustrious post-Fashion Week relaxation chez Jacobs. "Well, no, no. Both him and I are super-busy all the time. He has the [Louis] Vuitton show [in Paris], I have a lot of things to shoot..."

And he was off.

Ron Perelman and his ex, Patricia Duff, are back in court because a court-appointed lawyer for their 13-year-old daughter says that the girl has been subjected to emotional abuse. [NY Daily News]

Ashley Dupre thanked her fans and critics on her MySpace page yesterday. [NY Daily News]

Helena Christensen will not shake your hand if you cross her. [P6]

Larry King's wife, Shawn Southwick King, has reportedly gone to rehab for her addiction to painkillers. [P6]

Bravo's Shear Genius stylists will give New Yorkers free blow-outs in Times Square today. [The Cut]

“People get bored and wait too long,” explains Mr. Lindbergh of the spread’s concept. “Because the bad behavior fashion crowd, you know?” Perhaps surprisingly to some, Mr. Jacobs appears an extremely good sport in the video, gladly making fun of his own notoriously-tardy fashion shows. “This is a good way to kind of end it,” the fashion designer says. “Just have it documented as a spoof and be on to the next. I’m really amused by it. And fashion is such a circus, and shows are such a circus. I think for anybody who doesn’t know this—it’s insane what we all go through. So it makes good pictures.”