Cindy Sherman. (Adriel Reboh/Patrick McMullan)

“Look who it is: it’s Edwina, the Edwina,” Isaac Mizrahi exclaimed to The Observer this past Saturday, as he approached Edwina von Gal, the designer who, Ross Bleckner told us, “did the landscaping at my house in Sagaponack.”

We were at Cindy Sherman’s new East Hampton home at a benefit for the Azuero Earth Project, the Panama-based ecological nonprofit of which Ms. von Gal is president. It was a cozy beginning-of-the-end to the Hamptons summer season. Guests sat on benches under a white tent to eat empanadas and watch performances by Suzanne Vega, Rufus Wainwright, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. Children climbed into pendulous bamboo cocoons, stuffed with pillows, that swayed from the trees.

“I live just up the road,” Ms. Vega, who had been asked at the last minute to replace Rubén Blades, told us. “I originally came as a guest of Laurie’s, and I thought I was going to see Rubén Blades!” Wearing a top hat—a “tip of the hat to Marlene Dietrich”—Ms. Vega performed “Marlene on the Wall” and “Gypsy,” written when she was a “folk-singing and disco-dancing counselor” at a summer camp in the Adirondacks. She had M.C. Bob Balaban serve as an impromptu music stand, holding a handwritten lyric sheet for a new Dylan-inspired number about the tarot’s Queen of Pentacles.

“I probably shouldn’t have kissed her,” Mr. Balaban confided to us afterward. “It’s rude to kiss somebody you’ve just met.” Mr. Balaban told us about his upcoming appearance as Lena Dunham’s psychiatrist on Girls, and recommended we visit Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s former home down the road. “It’s just a little hut,” he explained. “They didn’t have any money.” (We read that Ms. Sherman paid $4.65 million for her estate, though we weren’t invited inside.)

Gorgeous in two shades of blue mufti (a baby blue wrap over a navy dress), the chameleonic Ms. Sherman told us that though she had just moved in a month ago, “There’s just a few little things that need to be tweaked, but I’m pretty settled.” Was this party a little housewarming, then? “A big housewarming,” she corrected us. Ms. Sherman also talked about transplanting her career retrospective from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to San Francisco’s MOMA, where it’s currently on view. “The space is different; it was hard to edit out some of the work.”

We watched Gina Gershon and Martha Stewart, both in pre-Labor Day white, run around taking pictures, and stood by as Mr. Mizrahi introduced Mr. Bleckner to his husband, Arnold Germer.

“We’re married, you know,” said Mr. Mizrahi.

“I didn’t know!” Mr. Bleckner replied

“Now we’re moving in together,” Mr. Germer went on.

“That’s exactly what married people do!” Mr. Bleckner pointed out. “Usually it’s the step before, but I guess you’re playing it safe.”

Messrs. Germer and Mizrahi (whose bandana matched that of Bruce Weber, also in attendance) weren’t the only couple at the party to have taken advantage of New York’s new same-sex marriage laws. David Maupin and Stefano Tonchi brought their twin girls, Maura and Isabella.

We asked Mr. Tonchi about changes at The New York Times’s T Magazine, which he left two years ago to edit W, specifically about the recent departure of his successor, Sally Singer. “Oh, please. Old news,” Mr. Tonchi answered summarily.

Mr. Wainwright brought his husband, Jörn Weisbrodt, whom he had married the week prior. He opened his performance with what he called a “really Hamptons-y song about a bored housewife ... which I have become. Love it!” Later, he sang about his own Hamptons domesticity in “Montauk”: “This next song is about my daughter, Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen, and also my incredible new husband, Jörn Weis-” he caught himself and laughed. “Jörn Wainwright. Or Rufus Weisbrodt, however you do it. In fact, his name is Weisbrodt, which means ‘white bread’ in German, and what is it, there’s something about a honeymoon? In Dutch, a honeymoon is called a ‘white bread,’ white bread weeks. You can get fat, basically, now that you’re married.”

Lou Reed, married for four years but with his wife for a decade prior, came off a little less enchanted. “Are you done? Jesus. And we’re related,” Mr. Reed muttered jokingly, as Laurie Anderson plugged in her violin next to him, generating a loud electronic buzz.

“I would cut my legs and tits off/When I think of Boris Karloff,” Mr. Reed sang, in a song from last year’s much-maligned Metallica collaboration Lulu. He next performed a monologue in the voice of his mentor Andy Warhol: “Lou Reed got married and didn’t invite me ... you know I hate Lou, I really do.”

Ms. Anderson performed a monologue of her own, about observing the Amish in Western Pennsylvania—“Gee, I wonder what it’s like to live that way,” she mused—which nearly cleared the tent, though her political criticism drew some laughs. “Ever since hearing Clint Eastwood talk about optimism the other night at the Republican Convention,” Ms. Anderson narrated, her voice electronically shifted several octaves down, accompanied by slow synth chords, “I actually became extremely pessimistic about the future. I mean, look at the odds for a second. You have more chance of getting hit and killed in a car crash than dying in a plane crash.” (Here, she lost us again.)

As the wind off of Accabanac Harbor picked up (“I’m getting the best hairdo of my life thanks to this body of water,” Mr. Wainwright joked), guests began to wrap their shoulders in complimentary green picnic blankets.

Patrizia Pinzon, visiting from Panama, bemoaned the absence of Mr. Blades, the one Panamanian who had been scheduled to perform. “Everybody’s here, but they don’t know what it’s about.”

The design guru can barely have hung up the curtains in his new West Village pad, but now he's bought a new one for three times as much. Mr. Mizrahi nabbed a  West Village one-bedroom at 59 West 12th Street in March for $1.1 million, The Observer reported. At the time that sounded pretty cozy for him, plus partner Arnold and dog Harry. Apparently we were right, because the little family will move 11 floors up into a new $3.5 million place.

His new home, currently owned by Carla Barr, is unlisted. But, here's the old Prudential Douglas Elliman listing and pics for his current place. Keep your fingers crossed the design dream will soon hit the market, no doubt minus the purple shag rug.

The bandanna-touting, flip-flop wearing designer was born in Brooklyn but prefers the Village these days, especially the food at nearby Sant Ambroeus on West 4th Street.

Fabulous, darling.

lkusisto@observer.com

Ms. Von Furstenberg spent the evening flitting back and forth between her Washington Street boutique and fittings across the street for her Sunday runway show; she was joined by Molly Sims and Alison Brie. We caught up with DVF on one of her rounds, halfway between a stint at the DJ booth and her entrée into something called the HP Experience Lounge, which uses large touch-screen LCD monitors to make Fashion Week look like it's taking place in a spaceship. "It's just a party with design and music, and people get dressed!" Ms. Von Furstenberg said, aptly summing up the evening's proceedings. A lovely, leggy fan interrupted to say hi, cooing at the evening's star, who cooed right back. "She came all the way from Greece!" DVF told us, clutching our arm.

We also spotted Bravo SVP and noted Housewife wrangler Andy Cohen on the sidewalk outside, lingering near a white Maserati convertible. We couldn't help asking whether Teresa Giudice, of the New Jersey hausfraus clan, left any bruises when she shoved him into a chair on the recent, contentious season reunion. "No! Oh, my God, I'm so clean," he said. Thank goodness! Mr. Cohen said the shows he's most excited for this week include Ms. Von Furstenberg's and Isaac Mizrahi's. Never one to resist the opportunity for a plug, he added, "Oh, I'm excited about the Top Chef finale on Wednesday night! There's an amazing party at Craft celebrating it, and I'm very excited about that, because it's one of the best finales that we've done." Don't worry, Andy--we're DVRing it!

When Catherine Malandrino entered her own store on Hudson Street, she was able to maintain a slightly lower profile than the immediately-mobbed Ms. Von Furstenberg; she casually chatted with fans and enjoyed being the mistress of her own domain. "I just had a woman who was asking me about the same look I'm having tonight, wanting to buy exactly the same [one]. And some telling me about why they buy my dresses... it makes a lot of hard work worth it!" Ms. Malandrino said, her charming French accent fully in evidence. She had just arrived from judging a makeup competition with with Trish McEvoy and Hamish Bowles. "Yeah, at Bergdorf Goodman! It was great! There was a very talented artist that we all agreed to. I think it's a very special night to encourage customers and people that love fashion to be part of a very collaborative world." We're not sure exactly what that means, but we love the way she says it!

The quaint one-bedroom in the 1931 Emery Roth & Sons-designed building has a cozy and convenient layout: the walk-in closet is significantly larger than the petite kitchen corridor—really, this is Mr. Mizrahi we're talking about, not Nigella Lawson; closet space is what the man needs. Not to mention the "large dining gallery" which opens onto an "oversized" living room with a wood-burning fireplace and tree-line southern exposure.

The Brooklyn-bred Mr. Mizrahi, who has boasted, "I'm as much a part of New York as the rats," bought the apartment from publishing veteran Jack Kliger, who took over as CEO of floundering TV Guide last summer. Before that, Mr. Kliger was chief executive of Elle publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., and before that he was publisher of Glamour and GQ magazines.

Mr. Mizrahi is known to live in the West Village with his partner, Arnold, and his dog, Harry. Neither Mr. Mizrahi's spokesperson nor Mr. Kliger could be immediately reached for comment; but this reporter, for now, guesses that it sounds like an expansion or a purchase for a friend or family member.

cmalle@observer.com

When the lights went down, Mr. Mizrahi’s colorful, whimsical collection streamed through purple velvet curtains. The models wore red lipstick, bedroom slippers and, most notably, a fashion innovation not appropriated from some 20th century decade (unless some friends of Marcel Duchamp did it without our noticing): handbags as hats! Ms. Wintour took it in from behind her sunglasses.

She will probably repeat this routine six or seven times today, not because she can’t arrange private viewings, but because her presence, augmented by all those photographs and pithy quotes, supports these designers’ businesses. When the Mizrahi show ended, to cheers, Ms. Wintour leapt up—as she always does—wrapped in her fur and guided by a bodyguard, and darted out of the room before she could get stuck in the slow-moving bottleneck amassing on the runway. One could hardly blame her.

We started the year worrying that pom-pomed moccasin boots were here to stay. Thankfully, we now know they were not.

Meatpacking district original Florent Morellet failed to understand the skyrocketing rents on his "shabby" bit of Gansevoort St. 

At a Bergdorf Goodman Fashion Week party, a slightly manic Isaac Mizrahi explained why he does not attend fashion shows. Later on, at Cynthia Rowley, Parker Posey told us she doesn't like runway viewing because it makes her sweat. And Victoria Beckham almost prematurely revealed the winner of Project Runway.

A couple weeks later, we continued to talk fashion at the Westminster Dog Show: “You never want to wear anything that outshines the dog, you want to wear shoes that won’t slip, and you never want to wear anything that clashes with the carpet.”

On the one-year anniversary of The Box, now-embattled owner Simon Hammerstein told us: “If you look at the program from last year till now, certainly we kept pushing the boundaries of what we thought people would be able to take. … It paid off because people really responded well to stuff that I thought they would get creeped out by." How things change in a year!

L.A.-based institution Wolfgang Puck dissed hometown hero David Chang. 

We attended a non-fund-raising fete in honor of the Jagger Dagger--a specially designed $250,000 ice pick that Jade Jagger created for Belvedere vodka--and Alexander Wang, Tara Subkoff, and Tatiana von Furstenburg were all confused. 

Even after quitting his (recently resurrected) Gatecrasher column, Daily News gossip Ben Widdicombe found the time to fill us in on New York chatter from Istanbul.

Sarah Jessica Parker played rock star at the premiere of Sex and the City. 

A post-Padma Salman Rushdie shilled for the Kama Sutra at a steamy Barnes & Noble reading. 

Summer rolled around and we pondered the wearability of the season's ubiquitous maxi dress.

At the 30th anniversary of Betsey Johnson, the designer mourned the death of downtown. More recently, the old-school club kids at Susanne Bartsch's Christmas toy drive proved that they're still having fun. 

Out in the Hamptons, we tried--and sort of succeeded--to wheedle information out of a freshly divorced Christie Brinkley.

We made a study of Chuck Bass--er, Ed Westwick's--carefully crafted photo face in preparation for a very special Gossip Girl party.

At the DNC in Denver, the celebs of the Creative Coalition wondered how to get in touch with the common folk. However, by the end of the week, they were more than happy to relax at Google and Vanity Fair's fancy get-together.

Over at the RNC in Minnesota, buddies Danny Meyer and Tom Brokaw unwound over junk food and fly-fishing chat.

Fashion Week: Round II brought us to a glittery party hosted by Interview at the unfinished Standard Hotel and a premiere party for The Rachel Zoe Project, where Ms. Zoe's mother told us some cute stories about her daughter (our next run-in with Ms. Zoe was less warm). Andre Leon Talley hoped for a new generation of less emaciated models, and Andre 3000 informed us that dressing well doesn't mean you're gay. To top it off, we stumbled upon a quietly A-list party on West 31st St. 

At an Accompanied Literary Society party (co-hosted by Diesel), literature (sort of) met fashion. We met Fiona Apple, who was there with author-boyfriend Jonathan Ames. 

Toby Young returned to New York to promote the film version of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. 

We got pre- and post- election assessments from the literary and media set at the New York Public Library Lions benefit and a screening of After the Party, respectively.  

We found out that Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise eat at the Zaro's across the street from our office (sometimes)!

The art and social worlds were forced to note the tanking economy. 

Finally, to close out the year, we were treated to a discourse on hip-hop by Tom Wolfe. 

And so The Wall Street Journal has posed a reasonable question: Is Bling Over?

Francois Henri Pinault, the CEO of the PPR luxury group that owns Gucci, reportedly said a few weeks ago that the rich will always be rich. Still, Francesco Trapani, chief executive of the Bulgari Group, recently had to sell his 137-foot yacht. And Barry Sternlicht, the chairman and chief executive of Starwood Capital, told The Journal that he's "just waiting out the tsunami. That's what this is, a financial tsunami."

And while some retailers are already anticipating a drop in revenue--Bergdorf Goodman's fashion director, Linda Fargo, said she's planning to buy more carefully for spring--others are continuing to open stores and hike up prices on luxury merchandise. Ralph Lauren recently released new made-to-order Ricky bags priced as high as $28,995 a pop. Mr. Trapani has just opened another Bulgari store on Avenue Montaigne in Paris.

Just this week, the Daily Transom received a vial of a Le Prairie anti-aging cream that will retail at $1,000 a jar. And yesterday Isaac Mizrahi gave The Times some rather unconventional advice for shopping during a recession. "Never buy anything that’s on sale," he said. "That’s always junk. … You’re just buying it because it’s cheap.”

If the rich in the West can no longer afford the luxury goods market, who will take their place?

The answer is hardly surprising: China, Russia, the Middle East and India. In February of this year, the Guardian published an article predicting who will be the new patrons of luxury merchandise, should the West's economy continue to falter:

Then again, the main Russian stock exchange was closed on Wednesday for two days because of its steep losses, after its worst-ever loss on Monday and another loss Tuesday. So perhaps no one is truly immune.

Target will open four pop-up stores in New York this week--in Midtown, Union Square, SoHo and the East Village--where shoppers will be able to buy designs by Sigerson Morrison, Jonathan Saunders and Anya Hindmarch weeks before they arrive in stores. [Vogue UK]

Meanwhile, here's a slideshow of Mr. Saunders' collection for Target. [The Cut] 

Isaac Mizrahi's collection for Liz Clairborne has leaked. [WWD] 

Vivienne Westwood has recorded a music album. [Vogue UK] 

Gen Art will make select looks by  JF and Son, one of its labels, available on Yoox.com one day after the garments are sent down the runway in its 14th annual Fresh Faces show. [WWD] 

According to an invite, illustrated with an Obama portrait and bearing a "Carpooling Encouraged," reminder, co-hosts in alphabetical order include Alec Baldwin, Christy Turlington Burns & Ed Burns, Barbara Lee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and Carl Spielvogel, Laura Durning, Jason Epstein, Katie Lee and Billy Joel, Ellen Chesler & Matt Malow, Obama veteran donors Jay Johnson and Brian Mathis, Isaac Mizrahi, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosie Perez, Jane Rosenthal, Russell Simmons, and Robert Zimmerman, among others.

The price is the usual $2,300 for admission, but Obama's appeal to the youth vote has hit the Hamptons too, and "specially priced" $1,000 tickets will be available for supporters between the ages of 16 and 25.

John Koblin looks at the new advertiser-friendly glossies on the horizon—WSJ from The Wall Street Journal, FW from The Washington Post, Manhattan and others—and notes, "the traditional, cozily amorphous job of the editor—rumpled visionary, bold procurer, acid social critic, lover of words!—is starting to look very different. Sort of...crisper... As envisioned by businesspeople, the New Editor seems a kind of bland, affable and well-connected creature … much like, well, a businessperson."

Is The New Yorker's James Wood becoming a guru for writers? Leon Neyfakh checks out the tips offered in Mr. Wood's new book, How Fiction Works, and asks, "Who will heed them? And will the fact that Mr. Wood has laid them out so plainly in this succinct volume—something few literary critics, to say nothing of book reviewers, have the heart to do these days—increase the likelihood that aspiring writers will eventually absorb and adhere to his standards?" Plus: David Carr.

Plus: Madonna's brother... Issac Mizrahi... The New Old Gays.