Joining us:
Peter Davis, editor-in-chief of Scene magazine
Scott Lipps, president of model agency One Management
Mary Alice Stephenson, style and beauty expert
Kelly Cutrone, of the fashion PR world and America's Next Top Model judge

So check it out here! Our lunchtime Branch conversation on Fashion Week Etiquette.

http://branch.com/b/fashion-week-etiquette

Outfit by Holy Tee, Skybox by American Express, posture by years of bad habits

I used to think Fashion Week was fun. This was years ago, when “the tents” referred to actual tents. Back in the day (it must have been, oh, 2008) my friends and I would try to talk our way into Tommy and Oscar shows and blog about the experience. It was surprising how often our feigned frustration—“What do you mean I’m not on the list? Please call Eric and let him know that we’re here”—would get us in.

I’m still not sure if there was an Eric, but somehow he always came through.

Now, older and wiser and having recently embarked on a journalistic mission to embed myself among the social elite, I have actual invites (22, to be exact), a fresh Anna bob and a mission, should I choose to accept it, to treat Fashion Week not like a joke, but like a job.

Which is a lot harder than it looks.

I began my odyssey by tagging along with The Observer’s resident fashion expert, Ben Le Hay, to a pair of showrooms—Archetype on Broadway and European designer mecca Agency V—where, get this, people just give you clothes. For free! All you have to do is pick out which ones you want, and hopefully get your picture taken wearing them.

The clothes on offer weren’t exactly my style, which is to say they were stylish, like the asymmetrical tiered gray miniskirt and fitted long- sleeve shirt from Holy Tee that made me look like a slutty ice skater. (It turned out to be a good choice, or so our fashion mentor, Mary Alice Stephenson, tweeted after we ran into each other at Doo.Ri.)

There were paint-splashed yoga pants that tapered into trousers from 5 Preview, and dresses that looked like muumuus made from fabric that felt like the scratchy cover of grandma’s couch.

As for accessories, writer Paula Froelich, formerly of Page Six, generously donated a giant Prada bag and a Chanel clutch to the cause. The upshot of which was that I was too scared to eat, drink or carry anything on my person for the entire week, lest I spill food down my front or have a pen leak in a bag worth more than my life.

Mr. Le Hay had made me a Xeroxed cheat sheet featuring pictures of every prominent socialite, designer and super-flack whom I might reasonably encounter. And though I tried to commit the faces to memory, I frequently found myself wondering, Was that Poppy DeLevigne, or a buyer from Neimans?

Sometimes I just took a guess.

“Oh, my god, Eric!” I exclaimed, sauntering over to a guy I could swear I recognized from the look book. “How are you?”

“I’m great, how are you girl?”

If Derek Blasberg noticed that (a) we had never met and (b) I didn’t know his name, he was polite enough not to show it. (This, I realized, was my trump card: All these other fancy people are clearly too well-mannered to acknowledge my own ill-manneredness.)

“Oh you know … this,” I said, gesturing toward the runway. “Sooo crazy. I can’t wait for the party tonight.” I was hoping the prompt would be enough for Mr. Blasberg to reveal the secret location of whatever party might be happening.

“Oh, yeah, maybe I’ll see you there!” he said with a smile, turning his attention back to Alexa Chung, who was being accosted by a woman asking her to sign a petition for the Model Alliance.

“We’re fighting for models’ rights,” the woman explained.

Ms. Chung looked confused. “I think I’d need to know a little more information before I sign this,” she said. “I’ve never heard of you before.”

Earlier, I got a quick lesson from former Vogue associate publisher Lottie Oakley on how the seating at the shows was arranged. We were looking down from the American Express Skybox, which she hosted all week. “Section A is your American editors, designers and magazine people,” she pointed out. “Across from them are the Europeans. See, there’s Amy Astley from Teen Vogue. She’s the blonde with the bangs.” I nodded, although everyone in Section A was blonde with bangs.

The middle section, Ms. Oakley told me, was for the buyers, while the chairs set up on the actual runway—literally, in the middle of the runway—were reserved for celebrities and fashion bloggers.

The SkyBox was also where Lucky editor Brandon Holley imparted some secret wisdom about how to snag a good seat: “Be a blogger! I was just sitting with the editors from Glamour,” she said. “And they had a seat reserved in the front row that everyone wanted. But they weren’t giving it up. they told us it belonged to a boy named Bryan. BryanBoy? He was a fashion blogger; he helped me use Twitter.”

We met Kelly Cutrone of People’s Revolution at Mara Hoffman’s show. (Ms. Cutrone had thoughtfully seated us in the front row, next to the designer’s father, Monte. Nice gentleman, and he didn’t bat an eye when he realized his daughter had designed the condoms included in her gift bags.)

When I let it slip to the author and TV fixture (who’s replacing Andre Leon Talley on the forthcoming season of America’s Next Top Model) that I was determined to make myself over, during the course of this column, into an “It” girl, she chided, “Don’t try to be an ‘It’ girl, be a ‘You’ girl.” She added that Fashion Week would be useless to me as a social hunting ground, “because no one really ‘meets’ during shows.” She suggested I work on “cultivating a persona” instead. “You can get noticed and build up some buzz just by being a little mysterious.”

The best way to be truly mysterious, of course, is to occupy a completely undeserved seat in the front row. Snagging one isn’t that hard, Ms. Cutrone told me: one need merely be overly gracious to those apple-cheeked interns wearing headsets, because they’ll be the ones frantically trying to fill up the gaps when showtime starts and someone important hasn’t arrived.

“Oh, if you need help filling A-1-13,” I cooed during Geoffery Mac’s show at Runway Exit, “I’d love to help you out.”

More challenging was gaining access to the VIP suites and parties. The former I managed via a combination of old-Drew shamelessness and new-Drew business cards. The Mercedes-Benz lounge featured skin-care stations, plush sofas and free Champagne. It was also the only place—outside the $10 sandwich corral next to the blogging pen—where I came across a few snacks that weren’t in bar form.

I spent half of Fashion Week in that lounge, where I met New York Giants wide receiver Ramses Barden and struck up a conversation with Emma Snowdon-Jones about the importance of delivering a sincere compliment. “You always want to say something nice about what someone is wearing,” the Dominican-born socialite told me. “But people can tell in your tone of voice if you are picking up on an item just to have something to say.”

As for the after-parties, I skipped most of them, because a girl has to eat and sleep and also pack all her belongings because she’s in the process of moving. Sometimes, a girl even has to try to put together a bed frame while subsisting on a diet of Fiber One bars, and ends up knocking over two lamps and shattering glass everywhere.

My Fashion Week burnout happened five days into the process. While sitting at Diane von Furstenberg’s show fiddling with a long necklace generously lent by Lia Sophia, I think: I’ve finally made it. I’m at one of the most high-profile shows at Fashion Week, surrounded by the likes of Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter and Carine Roitfeld. I’m not just at Fashion Week … I’m fashionable!

That’s when I looked down to check the chain on my necklace and realized that, yes, the black shirt that looked fine in my lampless bedroom that morning had revealed itself to be 100 percent transparent. Fortunately, the circling photographers were too bent on getting a shot of Anderson Cooper to notice.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful to be a nobody in my life.

dgrant@observer.com

Ms. Cutrone

Tyra's got a new sidekick.

Kelly Cutrone will take over as the newest judge on The CW's America's Next Top Model, taking the place of André Leon Talley, the former Vogue editor-at-large.

The Observer received confirmation during a chat with the People's Revolution head honcho herself.

"I'm really excited," Ms. Cutrone told The Observer via speakerphone from her apartment. "I'll be in contact with the audience that I had from MTV. A lot of those young women who watch The Hills and The City also watch America's Next Top Model.  I think it's gonna be be fun."

The offer was a last-minute deal, she told The Observer, that left her without any time to meet with producers for discussion. ANTM will be her first priority, of course, but Ms. Cutrone will still be a featured guest on Dr. Phil. Also, we hear that her new project--a teens in the 'burbs show called Normal Gets You Nowhere--has been greenlit by MTV. Plus, she's got her fashion line, Electric Love Army, that's backed by Christopher Burch. And all the New York events she throws! Kelly, you've got a busy few months ahead of you.

Ms. Cutrone is no stranger to the small screen. The public relations queen first appeared on The Hills, as Lauren Conrad's boss, and carried that role over to MTV spinoff The City. Most recently, she starred in and produced Bravo's Kell On Earth, which focused on the inner workings of People's Revolution.

And will Lauren Conrad's boss be best buds with Tyra Banks?

"I haven't seen Tyra in a long time but she's incredible," Ms. Cutrone said. "She's made an amazing name for herself."

The seventeenth cycle of America's Next Top Model is currently on air.

Kelly Cutrone (Getty Images)

Kelly Cutrone, the fashion publicist turned reality-TV personality (The Hills, The City and Kell on Earth), self-help author and Dr. Phil protégé, is still diversifying. She recently announced plans to start her own fashion line, Electric Love Army, backed by Christopher Burch, which will launch with three stores in New York next year. And now she’s created her own production company, POW, which stands for Power of the Word.

The company’s first effort, executive produced by Ms. Cutrone and named after her latest book, Normal Gets You Nowhere, is a reality-TV pilot currently under consideration by MTV. The concept is “part Great Santini, part dream maker,” Ms. Cutrone told the Transom. Each episode focuses on a creative teenager living in the boonies. The pilot stars a female skateboard deck designer from Michigan.

“I ask for her father’s hand in business,” Ms. Cutrone said with a laugh. Having obtained the parents’ O.K., the black-clad fairy godmother then whisks the young lady to New York City and helps her realize her artsy-kid dreams. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the series will get picked up, Ms. Cutrone warned, noting that even Lauren Conrad had a pilot rejected last season. It was probably too normal.

Her new boss told the Post, "I do not often hire someone without experience, but she showed a certain spark."

The air outside was extremely humid--more so inside a tent overfilled by about fifty people.

When the Transom asked Mr. Talley if he was warm, he quickly replied, “Of course not, I’m freezing.” (As beads of sweat dripped down his forehead.)

Homemaking potentate Martha Stewart was also there to support her good friend, Mr. Rucci. When asked if she was wearing one of the designer’s originals, she smiled and pointed to her brown ribbed skirt, which was almost entirely covered by a long white double-breasted overcoat.

“Partially,” she said, with a laugh.

Ms. Stewart had spoken to Mr. Rucci right before the show, and said that he “was nervous but always prepared.”

Nearby was designers Rachel Roy, in a tank mini dress festooned with silver sequins, and actress Keisha Whitaker in a black strapless frock. After about a minute of attention from the photographers, Kelly Cutrone, the famously strong-willed publicist, came over to force everyone off the runway and into their seats.

Radio personality Steve Harvey was also there with his very quiet but kind wife, Marjorie Bridges-Woods.

We didn’t know Steve Harvey was a Rucci fan!

“My wife is the real fan,” he said. “But I usually see all these clothes in my wife’s closet, I get the fashion show preview.”

It was Tuesday morning and Ms. Zalaznick, the overseer of various NBC Universal cable lifestyle channels, was standing in an ornate banquet hall at the Russian Tea Room, kicking off Bravo’s annual upfront presentation to reporters. 

Over the next hour and a half, a conga line of Bravo executives talked up the channel's strong performance in a weak market (first-quarter ad revenue up 21 precent versus last year!) and introduced a slate of hyperbolic new programs in various stages of development. 

Along the way, they introduced NYC Prep, a real-life Gossip Girl–type show, which will follow the lives of six high-rolling Manhattan preppies as they prance about town, hemorrhaging allowances and hair products. In a preview clip, one of the subjects and his well-coiffed wingman go on a double date. Preppy mating rituals ensue.

Elsewhere in network's plans for the future, competitions remained en vogue.

In The Fashion Show, designers will compete for the approval of fashion luminaries and a cash prize. In American Artist, creative types will square off in a range of disciplines for validation and a chance at a museum tour. In Launch My Line, “pop culture notables” will team up with designers for the chance to launch their own fashion line

Jumping on the big family bandwagon that is all the rage on TV these days (Jon and Kate Plus 8, Octomom, the Duggar clan, etc.), Bravo executives announced that they have two fertility-reality series in the works.

Laura Bennett will follow the Project Runway contestant and fashion designer and mother of six kids as she juggles life between professional success and domestic chaos. Design Sixx will revolve around the Manhattan design couple Cortney and Robert Novogratz and their six (going on seven) children

The network will also soon be kicking off Watch What Happens, a pop-culture roundup show—and vehicle for Bravo exec Andy Cohen's apparent ambition to spend more time in front of the cameras.

Also in the development works: gym makeovers, a celebrity florist, supermodels, Kelly Cutrone, super narcissists in Miami, and—for the first time in the network’s history—fiction!

Bravo exec Frances Berwick announced that the network has two scripted shows in the early stage of development: Blueprint, a “serialized dramedy” about two best friends, one gay and one straight, who run an architecture-design firm in New York; and 30 Under 30 a series about a bratty pack of young turks who make a magazine's annual list of 20-something go-getters and afterwards struggle to live up to the billing.

For the grand finale, Bravo trotted out the stars of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, who gamely sat around talking to Mr. Cohen about their lives and rivalries and cankles.

What separates the housewives of New Jersey, Mr. Cohen asked, from the housewives of, say, Orange County?

“We’re a force to be reckoned with,” said one of the botoxed beauties.

And also, according to Mr. Cohen, they spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around talking about their, um, hyperbolic “boobies.”

“It’s kind of a pop culture fourth wave of feminism book,” Ms. Cutrone said by phone today. “It’s everything your mother never told you because she didn’t know.”

Thanks to her successful PR company, People’s Revolution, Ms. Cutrone has long been well known in New York media and fashion circles as a severe and serious-minded businesswoman. She rose to national prominence last year when she became a regular on MTV’s kinda/sorta reality show, The Hills, and more recently, its New York–based spin-off, The City.

It was through those shows that Ms. Cutrone’s editor at HarperOne, Jan Baumer, first became aware of her. In an email, Ms. Baumer said she first reached out to Ms. Cutrone two months ago, and knew right away she was “the perfect person to write a book for both a new generation of aspiring professionals and those simply wishing to reinvent themselves."

Ms. Cutrone said the book will tell her life story—she is a single mom who made her way in New York after moving here from a small town outside Syracuse—but will emphasize practical lessons on how to get what one wants both at work and at home. "It's not like a how-to book so much as a kind of power girl's guide," she said. Topics covered, she offered by way of example, will include how to get your first apartment, why it’s important to leave a place if you feel like you’re going to cry, how to buy lingerie and how to tell the difference between a slant six and a V8 if you’re in the market for a muscle car.

The book will also instruct readers to set fire to and forget a number of other advice books they might have read in the past, including What to Expect When You’re Expecting, The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, Find a Husband After 35: (Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School), as well as “any book by Dr. Phil and any book by Martha Stewart.”

“It’s a real girl’s guide to the real fucking world,” Ms. Cutrone said. “Sex and the City was a lot of frosting. I like Candace, and I think she’s a good writer, but this isn’t four girls holding hands running around New York. It’s the real thing.”

Ms. Cutrone said she has plenty of experience as a mentor to young women.

“I raise 20 young women a year in my business,” she said. “A lot of them come to us when they’re 18, 19 and in college and a lot of them end up coming back to us and we watch them grow up.” 

Incidentally! Ms. Cutrone's co-writer on the book is none other than The Observer's own Meredith Bryan. The two met last summer when Ms. Bryan wrote "Dark Angel of The Hills," a profile of Ms. Cutrone that described her as "a kind of antidote to the series' dreamy plasticity, portraying fashion as an actual job where one works, rather than an excuse to rustle through racks of clothes while discussing your roommate issues."

The previous morning, Ms. Dupre had shown up unexpectedly at Yigal Azrouel’s women’s show. Mr. Azrouel’s front-of-house PR manager (and MTV reality show personality) Kelly Cutrone seated her in the front row. Although Ms. Dupre went relatively unnoticed, reporters quickly spread news of her presence. Mr. Azrouel, who had posed backstage with the foxy and tan 23-year-old (he apparently didn’t know who she was at the time), was not pleased—he canned Ms. Cutrone and her firm, People’s Revolution, later than night.

But about an hour into Mr. Buckler’s Oscar Wilde-themed presentation on Saturday evening, as they mingled with guests sipping on absinthe cocktails in the cave-like lower level of the designer’s SoHo store, Ms. Dupre and Ms. Cutrone, who represents Mr. Buckler, laughed the whole thing off.

“I think everyone’s so focused on the designers and Fashion Week,” said Ms. Dupre, whose black Christian Louboutin boots gave a few inches to her petite stature, when the Daily Transom asked if she’d encountered any cold stares while perched in front of the catwalk. “I mean, at the shows I’ve been going to, that’s been the focus.”

“That’s not true!” chuckled Ms. Cutrone, who was wearing black jeans and a black coat over a black-and-white striped t-shirt, her hair (also very black) pulled back into a skinny braid. “Yeah, there was no big deal,” she joked.  

“I mean, well, besides that one,” Ms. Dupre said.
 
“I’m just really happy to have you here,” Ms. Cutrone replied, turning to the Daily Transom. “I’m happy that she came. I think she’s great.”

Which raised the question: How and when did these two become such good pals?

Ms. Cutrone said their friendship began a few months ago. Ms. Dupre has been working on an album (“It’s gonna be deep pop,” she said) with Avril Lavigne producer Peter Zizzo, and some of Ms. Cutrone’s “music people” associates suggested the two should meet. The rest was history.

“When I met her I was like, you know what, I really like this girl,” said Ms. Cutrone. “I’m vehemently opposed to morality, and I think that people who are insistent upon propelling morality ultimately hang themselves.”

Meanwhile, upstairs, 15 male models were posed atop box-like risers opposite a black brick wall adorned with candles and dead roses. The music was solemn—a medley of live classical piano that began with Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”

The British-born Mr. Buckler, whose eponymous clothing line has outfitted rock stars including The Rolling Stones and The Strokes, described his fall 2009 collection, with its focus on tailoring and woolens, as something of a departure from Buckler’s denim-heavy origins. He said it was inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s 1891 novel in which a handsome young man sells his soul for perpetual youth while his face in a painting decays with age.  

“We looked at the shirt of the era, the kind of thing that Dorian Gray might have worn, and we looked at aging and time. We’d take a beautiful fabric and slowly keep washing it,” said Mr. Buckler, dressed head to toe in his own designs, including a gray cashmere sweater and a bamboo pant from his new collection.

Of course one couldn’t help but wonder if the evening’s melancholy aura was partly inspired by the grave economic reality facing the fashion industry. Indeed, Mr. Buckler has experienced some financial woes of his own, as reflected in recent staff layoffs and his decision to do a presentation rather than a full show.

Might his clothing line one day meet the same tragic fate as Dorian Gray?

“We’ve had to scale it back to the bare bones,” he said. “But we’re okay.”

For her show this season, Elise Overland will drape models in jewelry by artist Alexander Calder, provided by his grandson. [FWD]  

That music video that Halston is doing instead of a runway show this season is not so exclusive after all. [Racked] 

During Fashion Week, People's Revolution publicist Kelly Cutrone will have a breakfast routine of "latte, Marlboros, meditation," will be snacking on gum and possibly wearing a head scarf. [WWD] 

To promote Running in Heels, its new reality show, Marie Claire (along with Maybelline New York) will offer Fashion Week guests free taxi rides from Bryant Park on Feb. 19. [FWD]