Aside from admitting her excitement over Wire magazine and the then-forthcoming magazine George, which was launched by the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., she speaks of “an underground German designer named Helmut Lang” and a new designer out of Italy, Miuccia Prada.

The magazine industry may have changed a lot over the last decade, but fashion, it seems, has not. Whereas the style gap between 1985—think: neon, shoulder pads, enormous coifs—and 1995—think: earth tones, loose fits, greasy locks—is alarmingly vast.

“The look that we’re seeing across the board is very grown up,” Ms. Wintour, then 45, said. “A lot of designers are calling it ‘reality check.’ I think we’ve moved on from feeling very sorry about the 80’s, when we weren’t into grunge and depression and all-black and no makeup and no eyebrows.” She goes on to say that the season’s aesthetic is all about “wearability” and being “classic” and “chic.”

Sound familiar? Perhaps that’s because fashion journalists like the Times’ Cathy Horyn continue to describe new and future trends with words and phrases like “sophistication” and “the appeal of more womanly clothes.”

It’s also safe to assume that the qualities Ms. Wintour seeks in a prospective employee haven’t changed much either. After all, she told Mr. Rose: “I’m always looking for people with a sense of news and a sense of journalism, because I don’t think a magazine can be a kind of coffee table book,” Ms. Wintour continued, “One’s always looking for young people who are willing top push the envelope and who are willing to tell you you’re an old fuddy-duddy.” Ha! For some reason, imagining a Vogue staffer calling Ms. Wintour a fuddy-duddy to her face is supremely difficult.

So what was the Austrian fashion designer up to when he bought this modest, landlocked, three-bedroom house?

In February, Mr. Lang sealed a $1.5 million deal on the shingle-style residence built in the 1700's. It hasn't had a major renovation in recent memory, and a broker familiar with the property said it was "kind of falling apart." Mr. Lang declined to tell The Observer what he's going to do with it or to comment on the sale.

It's a fair amount of property: The 6.7-acre property sits on a northern stretch of Three Mile Harbor Road, near an inlet of the Long Island Sound. It's about three miles away-almost another world, by East Hampton standards-from Tyson Lane.

Assuming it's not Mr. Lang's intention to tear the main structures down, he's got a two-story house with two bathrooms, a few smallish windows, wide-plank flooring and a chimney to work with, as well as a large barn.

Mr. Lang's new property belonged to the estate of an Abstract Expressionist artist named John Little, who died in 1984 and left behind this bit of artsy, old-school Hamptons. Little had founded a company that produced fabrics and wallpaper inspired by the work of the Abstract Expressionists, who famously made the Hamptons their playground. He used the large barn as his studio.

"What was wonderful about the house was the incredible barn," said the broker who described the place to The Observer . "Actually, the barn was much nicer than the house."

BOB VILA, MARIAH CAREY TAKE TRIBECA BUILDER TO THE BANK

Developers of condominiums have been getting trounced by the State Attorney General's office lately for failing to provide the kind of top-notch construction that apartment-buyers were promised in their offering plans.

The latest to be forced to pony up money for condo owners is the developer of a Tribeca condominium tower that is home to Mariah Carey and Bob Vila. The sponsors there have agreed in principle to pay $1 million to the building's condo board to settle complaints arising from building defects.

The building, Franklin Tower, located at 90 Franklin Street, is a 17-story former office building that was converted into 25 luxury apartments in 1999. Ms. Carey has a triplex penthouse unit, and Mr. Vila has a floor-through apartment directly below her. In June of 2001, The Observer has learned, residents of the building filed a formal complaint with the State Attorney General's office, in which they alleged that the building had many defects which the building's sponsors-Corn Associates, in which developer Robert A. Levine is a principal-hadn't disclosed to the buyers.

According to an independent engineer contracted by Corn Associates and the Attorney General, those defects included window leaks, loose bricks in the building's façade, drainage problems with air-conditioning units and defects in the building's fire-proofing insulation.

"Some of it was trivial, some of it was major," said Assistant Attorney General Oliver Rosengart, who is handling the complaints.

The complaint did not take the form of a lawsuit; rather, it's a negotiation that Mr. Rosengart is brokering between the condo board and the building's sponsors.

Scott Mollen, Corn Associates' attorney, said that his clients have been "cooperating aggressively" with the Attorney General and the condo board.

"We are working in a positive and constructive way to reach a resolution that will provide a truly win/win situation," he said.

Mr. Rosengart, who handles many such cases for the Attorney General's office, echoed Mr. Mollen's characterization of the relatively cordial settlement procedure.

"The way they've handled it demonstrates that the sponsor has been cooperative," he said.

It still remains for the sponsor and Franklin Tower's condo board to hammer out some particulars of the settlement, but Mr. Rosengart anticipates that everything will be resolved in a matter of weeks.

"There's a basic agreement, and now the details about that agreement are being worked out," he said.

And as for the allotment of the approximately $1 million settlement, Mr. Rosengart said that the money "is going to the building, and the building will do what it pleases with it."

By the way, if you're interested in becoming Ms. Carey's downstairs neighbor, Mr. Vila's apartment is on the market-and it has been reduced in price from $5.25 million to $4.5 million. The Corcoran Group has the exclusive.

ANDRÉ BALAZS, IN $2.8 M. TOWNHOUSE FLIP BID, MOVES UP FROM VILLAGE TO $4 M. SOHO LOFT

As the owner of places like the Mercer Hotel in Soho and the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, hotelier André Balazs knows a thing or two about luxury accommodations. So when a 25-foot-wide Greenwich Village townhouse came on the market last spring, he snapped it up for the asking price of $4.2 million before most brokers were even aware it had hit the market.

Mint-condition 25-footers on West 12th Street don't come along that often.

Sometime in the intervening months, however, Mr. Balazs and his wife, Ford Models president Katie Ford, decided that townhouses weren't their thing. So they traded up: In late February, they closed on a 6,166-square-foot Soho loft that listed at close to $3.995 million, and put their townhouse on the market for $7 million, without ever having moved in.

A spokesperson said of Mr. Balazs and Ms. Ford: "They just didn't want to live in a townhouse. They wanted to live in a loft."

Their new apartment takes up the entire fifth floor of 59 Wooster Street, a landmark co-op loft building on the corner of Broome Street. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a 100-foot southern exposure, a 75-foot exposure to the east, and north and west windows facing a courtyard. The loft also boasts a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, a huge gourmet kitchen, library and separate laundry room.

The townhouse they put on the market is located at 16 West 12th Street, an area known as the Gold Coast of Greenwich Village. Mr. Balazs and Ms. Ford bought it in May of 2002 from Condé Nast International chairman Jonathan Newhouse, who lives in London with his wife, Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, a founding editor of the original Details magazine, a former creative director of Barneys and the owner of her own creative consultancy in London. They had purchased the property in 1993 for $1.86 million. The townhouse is a two-unit building, with a medical office on the ground floor and an 11,000-square-foot, three-story apartment above.

ASTOR PLACE 'CUBE' SCULPTOR ROSENTHAL CARVES OUT HAMPTONS HOME IN $4 M. DEAL

For the last 30 years, sculptor Tony Rosenthal used the first-floor garage of his carriage house at 173 East 73rd Street as a work studio. Although he's best known for creating Alamo , the huge swiveling cube on Astor Place, Mr. Rosenthal has also erected numerous other prominent pieces of installation art across the city. At 88 years old, he's still sculpting-but soon he'll be taking his chisels and soldering torches out of town.

Mr. Rosenthal recently sold the three-story building for $3.996 million and moved to Southampton, where his second wife has family. Reached by phone on the day of his departure, Mr. Rosenthal sounded stoic about the loss of his three-decade-old home and workspace.

"I've done a lot of work here, so there could be some nostalgia," he said. "But I'm not allowing it. No, I've decided it's going to be a new life for me out there, and I'm anxious to go."

Alamo was installed on Astor Place in 1967, and was soon after accepted as the city's first permanent contemporary outdoor public sculpture. Some of his subsequent Manhattan installations include Steel Park , a minipark of rectangular metal pieces at 80th Street and First Avenue; Rondo , a polished bronze disk in front of the Public Library branch on East 58th Street; and Five in One , a series of interlocking disks near Police Plaza in lower Manhattan. Mr. Rosenthal's first wife, Halina, who died in 1991, was among the co-founders as well as the first president of the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, a not-for-profit preservation advocacy organization.

The buyer of Mr. Rosenthal's home is a commercial real-estate developer who intends to use the property to house his family. He snagged it at the asking price, just shy of $4 million. Apparently, it's been a while since the house last got a face-lift.

"The house has a lot of character, but it needs a renovation," said the buyer's broker, Lydia Rosengarten of Leslie J. Garfield & Co.

The three-bedroom, 4,600-square-foot building is 20 feet wide and has a garden at the rear of the studio, in addition to a planted terrace on the third floor. Ms. Rosengarten said that the new owner plans to add a fourth floor to the property.

Brokers Stephen Perlo and Sarah Bond, both of the Corcoran Group, shared the exclusive on the property.

MIDTOWN EAST

303 East 57th Street

Three-bedroom, four-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $1.375 million. Selling: $1.193 million.

Maintenance: $4,192; 48 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: 14 weeks.

A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL Real-estate broker Larry Kaiser and the Panamanian ambassador to the United Nations, Mary Morgan-Moss, were recently walking across a narrow suspension bridge that spanned the Panama Canal when the talk turned to apartments. Mr. Kaiser, the president of Key Ventures Realty, was in Panama to attend the wedding of the ambassador's daughter. On the last day of his trip, Mr. Kaiser decided to do some business. "We were crossing this rickety little bridge-which wasn't open to the public, it's only open to officials-and I said, 'Mary, when you get back to New York, I want to start showing you some apartments.'" According to Mr. Kaiser, Ms. Morgan-Moss considered his statement for a moment, and then replied by gesturing toward the vista before them and saying, "Larry, this is what I want: light, water, views." Mr. Kaiser had just the place in mind, so when they returned to Manhattan, he brought her to the Excelsior, where he sold her this spread of two combined units. It has tremendous light, terraces, and eastern and southern views of the East River. "It's like Panama in New York," said Mr. Kaiser. Ms. Morgan-Moss also liked the expansive spread of the place, according to Mr. Kaiser, because she and her husband, an investment banker and real-estate developer at RBC Dain Rauscher, "love entertaining."

Fashion is, at this particular moment in time, well and truly fucked: The meaning of the word "fashion" has splintered into a thousand shards; the fashion cognoscenti are all awaiting a new generation of designers who will produce the Next Big Idea. The old guard, with massive fiscal responsibilities, focuses on marketing and positioning. Originality, craft and design wane. Pastiche and plagiarism wax. Confusion reigns. To use a lovely English expression, nobody knows if it's "arse holes or breakfast time." Small wonder radical kooks like Imitation of Christ are trying to deconstruct the system.

Despite the absence of great design and innovation, the Fashion Week entertainment factor is still quite high. "Creative directors" and show producers do their best to stave off boredom. This season they tickled our fancies with a wicked mix of opulence, smut and nostalgia–not necessarily in that order.

Nostalgia

During any revival it's always the stinkiest fromage that is dragged out for gourmet consumption; the 80's revival that raged through spring-summer 2001 Fashion Week provided much hilarity. For example, remember scrunch boots? (The early-80's boot–ankle- or knee-length, often heel-less, often in gray leather; the soft excess length bunches and scrunches à la the leg warmer, making the wearer look as if she is retaining mashed potatoes in her calves.) Wolfgang Joop accessorized his tough, kinky collection with high-heeled, warm-beige scrunch boots. Do the words "Jackie Stallone" mean anything to you?

Anna Sui wittily mined the early 80's: Banana- rama, early scroungy Madonna, Stevie Nicks and even Sheena Easton. Daryl K's approach was less literal: though she showed iconic 80's styles–tight vests with swooping lapels, ruched dresses, gathered tops with bat-wing sleeves–she twisted and tweaked her Bianca Jagger- Charlie's Angels looks into some of the grooviest clothes of the season. Ralph Lauren gussied up his tough black and white "separates" (a very 80's word) with contrasting pearls and corsages suggesting a confrontational lunch at La Mirage with Alexis Carrington. Rich bitches are back.

Opulence

"This is how we would like to live if we could have anything we wanted: nonchalant, simple, rich. Days by the pool. Nights on the town. Weekends at Goldeneye"–thus read the handout for Badgley Mischka, red-carpet eveningwear designers, prompting me to wonder how much less money our homeless person would garner were this to become his solicitation text. Maybe he would get even more money. After all, New York is feeling phenomenally posh right now.

The most eagerly anticipated event of the week was the opening of the Hermès Store, orchestrated by Jean-Paul Goude (remember the Grace Jones videos?). Despite the collective cringe of disappointment that rocked Manhattan when it became known the day before that there was to be no goodie bag, there was still a Day of the Locust turnout. The craze for bourgeois luxe–so long antithetical to high fashion–is now central to it.

Designers who formerly busted a gut to get Courtney Love or Lenny Kravitz to their shows now make personal overtures to ensure that Aerin, Pia, Brooke, Marie-Chantal and Marina are all present. And they are designing with them in mind: The avant-garde is dead, long live the new upper-echelon elegance. It's Ungaro and Lacroix redux, and everyone is doing it. I wasn't surprised to see pouf skirts return to Oscar de la Renta, but Donna Karan? The Queen of New Age has hocked her crystals and moved to Beekman Place. The result: a refreshingly kicky collection of belted jackets and knee-grazing chiffon tea-dresses with lots of dangly bits, colored predominantly in "caviar" and "champagne"–very Robin Leach.

Tuleh not only showed at Sotheby's, they accessorized their Lauders-who-lunch collection with ostentatious, jolie-laide bijoux from the upcoming Flora and Fauna jewelry sale on Oct. 23. The green garnet, diamond and white gold crocodile brooch on the previous page, for instance, is expected to fetch between $8,000-$12,000. (Call 606-7000 for more information.) The auction catalog was placed on each chair, and great amusement was to be had from watching the rich girls in the front row attempting to inhale the bejeweled lots off the pages.

Michael Kors' Palm Bitch (last season–i.e., in the stores now) has spawned a faux-hippie daughter, and despite her high-heeled Jesus sandals (these shoes, along with Carolina Herrera's Blahniks, were the best runway shoes of the season), she's running away from home on "a nouvelle trip down Route 66." She was, however, smart enough to bring lots of cash, trunks of gorgeous clothes and her personal trainer.

Smut

Thongs, nipples, pubic triangles and short-shorts are a great way to perk up the largely hetero photographers and get them clicking. "I'm going to have to saw my pants off when I get home," I heard one remarking somewhat crudely as he packed up his equipment. But gay or straight, who isn't fascinated by a bit of old-fashioned nudity? I know I am.

While Betsey Johnson did lewd things with Playboy Bunnies, James Purcell drew from Hitchcock for his delightful Marnie -inspired collection. Funny, I just don't recall the scene where Marnie's ass was hanging out of gold hot pants and her nipples were bazookering through her diaphanous chiffon blouse.

Helmut Lang got moist with a collection titled "When Love Comes to Town." This well-timed homage to the great designer Azzedine Alaïa confirms one of the all-time inviolable truths of fashion: Alaïa is the only person to design great fashion and make it sexy. If you wish to marry sexiness with high fashion, the Alaïa archive has it all. Mr. Lang's fiercely fitted graphic collection rides the Zeitgeist of a renewed interest in the great, yet diminutive, Tunisian-born genius. (F.Y.I.: Y.S.L. was from Algeria.)

But the buzz about Alaïa has nothing to do with the 80's revival–and it has nothing to do with his new Prada partnership, announced last week. It has to do with a renewed appreciation of his design talent and his commitment to his craft. There were a few tentative pockets of design-and-construction skill in the spring collections–William Calvert's formal Beene-esque explorations; some pin-tucks and faggoting at Katayone Adeli; a roped bustier at John Bartlett–but comparison with Monsieur Alaïa's work is not possible. Nobody comes close.

"Fashion is sick because the world is sick," said Mr. Alaïa, with a smile, when I spoke with him last week.

He was in town for the Sept. 22 opening of a retrospective of his work–providing an optimistic end to Fashion Week. The key to Mr. Alaïa's success has been his unwillingness to mount the hamster's wheel of the current fashion system. He is oblivious to deadlines and seasonal deliveries, and yet he has never disappointed his customers by producing an ill-conceived collection. As he told WWD last week, "The collection will be ready when it's going to be ready." The singing stops when the song has ended–not when Fashion Week has arrived. His unwavering commitment to his craft has paid off: His sell-through (full-price sales) at Barneys has always, despite erratic deliveries, been the highest in the store. The balance of creation, supply and demand is as it should be.

"Alaïa: An Installation," sponsored by the Brant Foundation, runs now through Nov. 15 on the second floor of 575 Broadway. The exhibition shows edited highlights from the Alaïa archive juxtaposed against Peter Brant's collection of Warhol's Last Supper paintings. I will never speak to any of you again if you do not run immediately to this astounding exhibition.

Correction

In the Sept. 25 issue ["What a Week! I Mean It!"], a gentleman in a photograph taken outside the Imitation of Christ show was misidentified in the caption as Jefferson Hack, the editor of Dazed and Confused magazine. In another caption, three models were said to be wearing the designs of Diane Von Furstenberg. In fact, though the designs were Von Furstenberg-like, they were those of renegade label Maione Weisser, which stationed models outside most of the major fashion shows during Fashion Week. In this case, the three models were outside the Marc Jacobs show on the night of Sept. 18.

Still am a hullabaloo of unemployment, oy vey . Thank God for alimony and the Carlyle Hotel. Ostensibly, I've been listening for Hillary, as you may recall, but I can't get a handle on what message I can channel for her. All I'm getting for Hillary is, "No denim." Even if denim is the big thing in fashion right now, I think Hillary should stick to blue skies not blue jeans.

Obviously, it's fashion week. Am off to a late start as I have just returned from spending Rosh Hashanah in Antwerp, which is in Belgium. Don't ask. The whole of Europe is riveted to the news from London concerning the revelation in The Times of London on Sept. 11 about an 87-year-old great-grandmother named Melita Norwood who, for like 40 years, was a spy for the K.G.B. I've read everything about this woman so far and have decided fashion must be taught to children at a much earlier age. Copies of Vogue should be placed under their mattresses-boys too-so the message of fashion seeps upward. I mean, there was not a drop of pizzazz in Melita Norwood's childhood, so no wonder she wanted to help Russia build the bomb. The poor thing was starved for dynamic accessories.

For the John Bartlett and Tommy Hilfiger shows I decided to dress "ghetto fabulous," as Puff Daddy says. Mixed high street with low street. From the bottom up: lavender silk and paillette Prada mule (high street), Diesel jeans (low street), Michael Kors cashmere tank top, and five Bulgari gold necklaces. O.K., six Bulgari gold necklaces.

Mr. Bartlett's concept was to mix "Che," as in Che Guevara, and Charo, the singer and onetime wife of Xavier Cugat. "Who?" the foreign princess sitting next to me asked.

Cut to Mr. Hilfiger's show at Madison Square Garden. Suffice it to say, Tommy did a big production, which included the performance on stage by the rock band Bush while models took the runway. (Cowboy shirts; denim.) The fashionistas did not applaud Bush-which didn't go over very well with Bush. I applauded. For his hair. When the show was over you could just hear the lead singer of Bush, whose name is Gavin Rossdale, I believe, saying into his microphone, "Fuck you. Fuck you very much. Fuck fashion." And I responded, "That's the problem. It's physically impossible. We've all tried."

Stopped at show of Miguel Adrover-no, he didn't change his name from Michael Andover-on the Lower East Side. Miguel's the real McCoy, the trendy designer of the season. His inspiration was a woman living in the South American jungle. (Che? Charo?) Was taken hostage by his razor-etched tops. Then stopped at the party for Kate Betts at Fressen, where I was overcome with mixed feelings-remember I aspired to become the editor in chief of Harper's Bazaar -but actually my feelings had more to do with the fact that I hadn't eaten all day.

Back at the Carlyle: three rice cakes with cottage cheese, two Golden Girls reruns, glass of San Pelligrino with Kava Kava drops. Good night, dear diary.

Sept. 15. Played hard to get today. Only went to Michael Kors- j'adored his "Palm Bitch" theme-and Anna Sui. Yesterday's "Ghetto Fabulous" look replaced by Gucci leather dress and black alligator Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Plus pink shatoosh. Speaking of which, can you believe I'm up on criminal charges for having sold shatooshes to a few friends a couple of years ago? With all due apologies to animal lovers, but I find these charges highly discriminatory. I was only trying to launch a career.

Sept. 16. Midnight. Don't think a lot is going to happen this fashion week. No big ideas. Women are left to their own devices, but there are worse fates. (Hot pants, for instance.) Meanwhile, can't help but wonder how the course of my life would have been different if I had worn Bill Blass clothes all these years rather than searching for foreign fashion gods.

Well, the beginning is always a place to start, and today started with my masseuse Melinda announcing at 8 A.M. that she was changing her name from Melinda to Merlinda because she has decided to become a magician.

I said, "Disappear my sore feet."

Then I called my car service and was informed there were no cars today because of the hurricane. Hurricane? Who knew? I watched TV last night, but no one interrupted the Golden Girls reruns on Lifetime to say there was a hurricane acomin'. Go to my window, open the curtains. Look west toward New Jersey, which I don't like to do because I firmly believe one should never look back, but there it is like an explosion of skunks: storm and tempest. Turned on TV for weather news. Began to panic. Felt overwhelmed by the prognosis; claustrophobia set in considering chances of being washed away without a car and driver, and I cried. (No big whoop; smudge-proof mascara.)

Knew what to wear: Marni's sea blue and sea green silk top and wool felt skirt, which already looked splashed with blue and green watercolors like the colors of the day. A Louis Vuitton rubberized logo raincoat. Black Hanro panties and satin-piped, cotton-knit camisole in case I had to bail or swim. Two large gold and pearl bangles, circa 1875, around each wrist to help me float. Gold leather Celine boots with heels.

Outside the sky slathered like wet gray flannel. Perfect day to reconsider cosmetics offerings at Zitomer's pharmacy-but no. Took a bus down Fifth Avenue. A bus! I took a bus. A packed tin bus. Like sardines swimming downstream. Got off at 42nd Street. Soaked by the time I got to the tents for the Bill Blass show at 11. After 40 years in business, this was his last show. The last show from the man who made American fashion not just respectable but profitable. J'adored so much, especially the spangled skirts and hooded jackets. Compared with a career like Blass', the hurricane seemed like an accessory.

Then they closed down the tents. Had to get to SoHo for Helmut Lang's show. Not go to Helmut Lang? Are you crazy? Rather die.

Took the subway. (Let me write that twice, dear diary.) Took the subway. Something called the B train, although I would have preferred the A train because, well, I was dressed for first class. Whatever. The next thing I knew, I was on lower Sixth Avenue. The rain has almost stopped. J'adore the fashion cycle. Felt like I was the twinkle in the eye of the storm then, walking toward Helmut Lang in SoHo where there's always hope.

Quiz Time

1. What's "Trippy World"?

a. An on-line service selling travel accessories created by the Boardman sisters, Samantha and Serena.

b. A psychedelia-inspired exhibition at Baron-Boisante Gallery.

c. Name of Leonardo DiCaprio's new house near Big Sur.

2. Who is the talent behind the much-anticipated fashion Web site www.show.uk.com?

a. Alexander McQueen

b. Nick Knight

c. Hussein Chalayan

3. Around what conceit does the plot of Warner Brothers' The Big Tease revolve?

a. A prom queen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) promises her virginity to the first of four high school football stars who write her the best love poem.

b. Based on Jack and the Beanstalk , it's about a town called Tease, Ohio, where Robin Williams plays a friendly giant.

c. A hairdressing competition with a cameo appearance by Naomi Campbell.

Answers: (1) b; (2) b; (3) c.

On Aug. 2 (his 37th birthday), Mr. Kalinsky, a former shoe buyer for Barneys, will open Jeffrey New York, a 12,000-square-foot former warehouse on the corner of 10th Avenue packed with expensive garments, reminiscent–in inventory, at least–of his former employer. Gucci, Helmut Lang, Ann Demeulemeester, Costume National, Dries Van Noten, Jil Sander, John Bartlett, Lucien Pellat-Finet and Marni, among others, will decorate his racks. Stuart Weitzman, Robert Clergerie, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada will line his centerpiece shoe display.

What Jeffrey lacks in name recognition and square-footage compared to Barneys (and everyone is comparing his store to Barneys), Mr. Kalinsky intends to make up for in pampering and Southern charm. The son and grandson of retailers and owner of three successful Atlanta stores–Bob Ellis, Jeffrey and Jil Sander (he owns her franchise)–will offer up his Manolo Blahniks with a healthy dose of hospitality, which may prove to be a welcome antidote to Madison Avenue, where the salespeople are almost always too hip to help. If you have ever been to one of Jeffrey Kalinsky's stores, you have probably met him, and chances are he remembers your shoe size.

Bag designer Judith Leiber calls Mr. Kalinsky her "terrific shoe man." And when wedding-cake designer Sylvia Weinstock, who has been shopping with Mr. Kalinsky for 10 years, heard he was coming to New York, she called him to say, "I can't wait! I have my charge card ready!"

Retailers are less giddy. In fact, Barneys is said to be ticked off. Jason Weisenfeld, vice president of public relations, tried to take the high road. "We are thrilled for Jeffrey as we are for all Barneys alumni that go on and excel in the world of retail," he said. "In Jeffrey's case, we are particularly flattered because he has always been very vocal about the enormous amount he learned during his tenure at Barneys."

Like how to sign a label like Gucci, which doesn't even sell at Barneys? "The area he is going into is extremely exciting," said Barbara Sforza, president of Zama Sport USA, importer and distributor of Gucci's women's clothing. "He has impeccable taste. It will be great for New York to have another small multivendor store. I am sure tons of people will be shopping there." Until Jeffrey, Gucci was available in New York only at Saks Fifth Avenue and the Gucci boutique on Fifth Avenue.

Laura Stephen, director of wholesale sales at Helmut Lang, also decided to sell to Mr. Kalinsky. "It is exciting and experimental and risk taking," she said of the store. Helmut Lang is sold at Barneys, Saks and at his own boutique on Greene Street. "He has excellent standards and excellent taste. It is very much not what is happening on Madison and Fifth and even in SoHo."

As it turns out, Jeffrey New York will be headed by a troika of Barneys graduates. On March 25, Mr. Kalinsky hired David Rubenstein, a former buyer of designer and evening collections at Barneys, as vice president of men's and women's wear. Mr. Kalinsky and Mr. Rubenstein, who has also been vice president of sales and merchandising at Isaac Mizrahi and then at Tse Cashmere, already collaborate on a casual men's and women's clothing line called Kalinsky Rubenstein, which is sold at Barneys and at Linda Dresner on Park Avenue. (Probably not for long.)

"He is entering a league of competition that is quite high," said Ellen Carey, former public relations director at Barneys until the late 80's, who was brought on as fashion director and vice president of Jeffrey New York, also on March 25. "The friends that he had previously might not be his friends now. Nobody is going to be happy to have a new retailer enter into this arena.… We're all sharing the same customers."

Lugging a cavernous Hermès bag across the slick cobblestones, Mr. Kalinsky approached his new space, the first floor of 449 West 14th Street, which used to be occupied by Moishe's Moving and Storage. "I mean, can't you see it?" he said, waving a buttery-leather-clad arm at the six-story limestone building. "It's a store! It's already a store! It looks like an old main-floor department store and it's going to be this raw."

Had it been a weekday, one of Mr. Kalinsky's friends might have asked him to pipe down. Upstairs from Mr. Kalinsky are the offices of designer John Bartlett, fashion event planners Milk Studios, Guccione Media ( Gear magazine) and fashion publicist KCD. Within a few blocks are restaurants like Markt, Petite Abeille, Le Gans, Macau and, soon, a Balthazar outpost. The Chelsea Market between 15th and 16th streets on Ninth Avenue houses wholesale and retail stores like Amy's Bread and Hale and Hearty Soup. Dozens of galleries have slowly migrated from SoHo to the far West 20's. Shortly thereafter, Comme des Garçons forged a path for fashion retailers, opening a store at 520 West 22nd Street between 10th and 11th avenues. Barnesandnoble.com sits across the street from the Chelsea Markets in the old Post Office building. Jeffrey will be the first multivendor retail store.

"It's the last frontier of New York," said Caroline P. Banker, senior vice president of New Spectrum Realty, who found Mr. Kalinsky his space. Since then, she has steered Portico into a former Williams-Sonoma outlet store on 10th Avenue between 23rd and 24th streets. "All of the buildings are going to be converted. The restaurants are always the first ones in. I keep getting calls about it. Every developer is trying to get in."

Mr. Kalinsky poked around the empty, windowless space, which has 18-foot ceilings supported by a couple dozen giant, square pillars. The original marble tile floor is scuffed. Along one wall are ancient elevators with mahogany cars, remnants from the days when the building was the Nabisco headquarters. They don't work but Mr. Kalinsky may fix them. "We are keeping everything architecturally we can from the building," he said. Even the loading bays. People can watch the new stock arrive while they shop.

The plan is to have shoes down the center of the store and ready-to-wear and accessories surrounding them. Men's and women's clothing will be hung side by side. "Wouldn't you rather shop with your boyfriend than without him?" Or wear his clothes. Or even have him wear yours. "You have to say, Why not? I wear a lot of Jil. I have been known to be in the Brooks Brothers women's department for too long." He likes their narrow-legged pants. "On me, it looked like high fashion, not $60 pants."

The store will be full of sights and sounds. "We will have all different kinds of dressing rooms. You know the pink room and the Blue Room at the White House? Each one will be different. Some will have CD players, some will have TV's, some will have both. It is going to be fun."

Mr. Kalinsky doesn't only want to sell to young, scrawny fashion addicts. He will also go after the fashion unspeakable: large sizes. "I am going to sell–I hope–to 80-year-olds. I want all size 14's in clothes. But I have to start slow and see if they will come. Shoes will come from the airport to the store in sizes 4 to 12, quad A's to B's."

He has already committed to 6,000 more square feet in January and has his eye on the second and the third floors, where Saks Fifth Avenue, among others, now have space. On his mind: cosmetics, a restaurant, furniture and maybe even a private Jeffrey New York label.

"I want people wheeling their racks into the store for me to look at their stuff. If they will come to me and show it to me, I'll look at it."

"People think I had the idea to open down here because Barneys doesn't exist down here anymore. That wasn't it at all," said Mr. Kalinsky. "I was originally shopping the city looking for the possibility of a Jil Sander flagship. When I started to hear about the rents, I thought, 'Wow! If she doesn't want to do that, I want to do it.'"

Then, Mr. Kalinsky had to put New York out of his mind; he was supposed to be marrying his boyfriend of eight years last Oct. 24. "In a synagogue with a rabbi. My mother walking me down the aisle in a dress designed for her by Michael Kors, his mother in a Guy Laroche dress. Three hundred friends and family for a beautiful seated dinner dance at the Four Seasons in Atlanta afterwards."

But then his plans changed. "Two weeks before the wedding, he slept with his new 28-year-old boyfriend."

With rents in the $20-a-square-foot range on West 14th Street, he decided to go to New York after all. He signed a lease, booked a suite at the St. Regis and started looking for an apartment in the West Village. "I always wanted this and now there is absolutely nothing–no reason not to."

Walking around the store, he said, "I love the whole synergy of the meat market and the sex clubs at night. What people call seedy and what I call seedy are two different things."

But Susan Rolontz, executive vice president of the Tobé Report , a retail publication, thinks he might be jumping off the deep end. "I think he's taking on a big risk," she said. "He is so far over! Maybe it is chic, but it is not the easiest area to get to.… I would offer a car service or a van service down to there from someplace. Lunch, free delivery service, lots of amenities, that all has to be part of the package.… Downtown Barneys offered free parking."

Mr. Kalinsky protested. "What a better place to shop than on the [Hudson] river? It is so open, it is not congested. SoHo is so claustrophobic." The sound of the West Side Highway filled the air.

"I think New Yorkers will go anyplace where they can get something wonderful with a great deal of service," said Ms. Weinstock. "This is going to be Southern service, Southern gentility with a sophisticated taste at an affordable pocket. Anybody who walks through that door will be treated like a princess."

Mr. Kalinsky hopes she's right–and she may be. "He is not a bank. He is the merchant," conceded Ms. Rolontz. "Personalized service and a personality was what it used to be about. We have lost a lot of those stores like Martha and Bonwit Teller. Even Bendel when they were on 57th used to do it."

Although Mr. Kalinsky still has much to accomplish between now and Aug. 2–like knocking down walls, adding windows and stocking the store–he is already planning his Aug. 1 store-opening party. "If I had to sell from picnic tables, whatever. I can put down some carpet today and have rolling racks and sell clothes."

He wants to throw a fund-raiser for breast cancer and AIDS research and charge $1,000 a person. He put in a call to Harper's Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis. And Sylvia Weinstock is "fixing him up" with party planner Colin Cowie.

Five months a "divorcé," Mr. Kalinsky was intrigued, then disappointed.

"Well, he has a boyfriend," Mr. Kalinsky sighed, "but he is a great party planner and is in New York and is somebody I should know."

Because why? First, the prospect of employment–in just two days, two days dear diary , the Mayor will announce my job as his Commissioner of New York City Politesse–has sent me spinning. (Not the stationary bike kind.) Second, it's New York fashion week, and designers are threatening a new shape for fall. And there are long skirts! Please don't get me started. Donna Karan told reporters the new shape will free us. Us women. From long and lean to loose and serene. Donna Karan calls the new shape: "cloudlike." Volkswagen calls it the Beetle.

Have just returned home from the Marc Jacobs show, held in a garage on West 23rd Street. To die. J'adore . Etc. Refined. Elegant. Ladylike. Casual. Gray is the new black. Still, I mean, I love Marc Jacobs–who, as far as I am concerned, walks on water–but what worries me is the shoes. Flats? Suddenly I'm supposed to saw off my five-inch heels?

Apparently. "Looks old," I overheard the famous stylist Joe McKenna advising a lady friend of his, pointing to her five-inchers.

It's past midnight. To bed then. To sleep. To take another pill, perchance. To dream.

March 31: In some kind of quandary. Helmut Lang, scheduled to show his collection at 1 P.M., opted at the 11th hour not to show live but, instead, to present the collection on CD-ROM's and on his special Web site, www.helmutlangny.com. Frankly, the only Web sites I'm familiar with are the cobwebs in some Long Island properties Sotheby's tried to rent me last summer. For the lucky few, there also is a 15-minute video of Helmut's fall collection, and a "look book." As such, one of the lucky few, that is, received phone call at the Carlyle where I am still residing during my divorce proceedings. Let Mr. Stine pay. Caller wants to know in which format I'd like my Helmut Lang video. Digital, disk, VHS, 3/4, or Beta? And I'm like, Excuse me: Try wholesale?

But a theme emerged. With Helmut Lang exchanging the catwalk for the computer, and with high heels out and flats in, the line of life–the line of fashion, the line between heaven and hell, the line of communication, the line the doctor draws before she injects the Botox–seems so much shorter. No? It probably is time to get on it. On said line.

I asked the concierge to get me a computer and whatever else I needed to access the Helmut Lang Web site. I further instructed the concierge to arrange a Web site for myself: www.phyllisstinechicthing.com has a certain ring. Also asked the concierge for a computer tutor to help me deal, as I would not describe myself as technically promiscuous or particularly gifted mechanically. I can set a table, but I can't do my own hair, if you see the distinction.

Ordered a pair of flats to be messengered from Chanel as I think I will need to practice walking.

Spent the afternoon preparing responses to questions I anticipate in my capacity as Commissioner of New York City Politesse when it becomes official tomorrow. I figure the next big thing in etiquette is the Viagra issue. How to talk about it, how to pop one on a first date without seeming like you expect sex, issues like that. How, if your advances are declined, never to complain aloud about the expense of each pill. Man plans and God laughs, regardless of the dosage. Viagra falls.

Whatever. Computer arrives. Virtually impossible to work. Computer tutor not available until Friday afternoon. Guess everyone is trying to get on line for Helmut Lang.

Failed walking in the flats, too.

April 1: Someone from the Mayor's office called to say the Mayor was too busy to announce my appointment today; why don't I tell people myself? Big whoop. Feel like an April Fool. Thank God for friends like Connie Seur. Always larking, Connie rang and suggested we wear our flats and take the subway to SoHo where, suddenly, Ralph Lauren decided to show his collection this season rather than in his Madison Avenue showroom. Surprised I ride the subway? I take it once a year to keep myself humble.

Liked Ralph's show. Midway through, Connie said: "All you need to know about fashion is where Bernadine Morris' seat is." The New York Times fashion reporter, now retired, a front-row veteran for something like two decades, was in the fifth row.

April 2: Wonder what the dismissal of Paula Jones' sexual harassment case signifies for American fashion, coming right in the middle of fashion week?

April 3: Add the latest superlatives to these designer names: Isaac Mizrahi, Norma Kamali, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Bill Blass, Badgley Mischka, Anna Sui, Carolina Herrera and Vivienne Tam. Vivienne just signed a deal with Judith Regan to write a book about her life and fashion. I wonder if Ms. Regan is interested in manners?

At Donna Karan, more flats and very pretty clothes. Instead of perfume freebies, got a CD called A Gift of Love . Readings by Deepak Chopra, Madonna, Demi Moore, Goldie Hawn, Rosa Parks (Rosa Parks!) and music inspired by the love poems of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian mystic. And a book of Rumi poems, too. Alas, there was no room for Rumi in my Kelly bag because it's so filled with Ziplocs full of vitamins. There I was on Seventh Avenue, juggling everything, when up comes Polly Glott, my international fashion journalist friend. "Everything's happening on the retail level, not on the runway," Polly says. "We're going to Marc Jacobs' boutique right now. Voilà !" Who's in the V.I.P. dressing room? Who knows the most salespeople? Who gets a piece of chocolate cake when they walk in the door? Whose designer spies inspect the racks for clothes to copy? Intrigue. Mystery.

In light of the Paula Jones decision, Polly thinks it's a good thing there is so much boiled cashmere and long skirts for fall. "What else are you going to wear if you don't want to get sexually harassed? Sheer? Short?"

Back at the Carlyle, my computer tutor waited. Long and lean, with almond-shaped eyes. Rather handsome. I've nicknamed him "Afternoon of the Faun." When the Rumi CD tumbled from my hand, he suggested we slip it into the computer. "In my drunken haze/ Whirling and dancing/ Like a spinning wheel/ I saw myself as the source of existence." Deepak sounds like a vintner from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book . Wow. Who knew you could play CD's from your computer? It's very global, no? Very fashion-forward. Playing Donna's CD while accessing the Helmut Lang Web site. We've been downloading, so to speak, ever since. Taking a break to order chocolate cake from room service and jot these few thoughts down.

Dear, dear diary. The fall shows are over, and spring is here!