The POSH affair was just that, a venn diagram of bold-face names from New York High Society and Haute Fashion crowds. The dress code for the evening was POSH and the crowd did not disappoint. Iris Apel was a resplendent bird of paradise in chartreuse silk Ralph Rucci, festooned with costume jewelry and her signature black-rimmed glasses. Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera drifted in a little later and chatted with Vanity Fair's Bob Colacello and Lady Jane Spencer-Churchill. Emilia and Pepe Fanjul were on hand to support their friend and fellow host, Pauline Pitt. Mrs. Pitt's daughters were also in attendance: Dr. Samantha Boardman Rosen and Serena Boardman Theodoracopulos. Waiters wafted around pushing through the long palm leaves that hung in front of them like stage curtains, bearing flutes of champagne and full-to-the-brim glass es of cold white wine.

Lorry Newhouse was in a floral creation by Rodarte. Her husband Michael, who runs the newspaper division of Condé Nast, looked natty in a striped purple suit. When we complimented him on his choice, with the speed of a flasher, he showed us the bordello-red lining of his jacket.

When the recipient of the POSH Fashion Visionary Award herself arrived, Vanity Fair Special Correspondent Amy Fine Collins, she was instantly swarmed by admirers. With her raven-black elfin hair and a designer's dream slim physique, Ms. Fine Collins takes very classic clothes and makes them cool. Last night was no exception, as she arrived in hot pink Carolina Herrera accessorized with dangling emerald and diamond earrings. She was accompanied by her daughter, Flora, a poised 17-year-old. "I'm wearing Alice and Olivia" she said, "except for these," she noted pointing at her rhinestone covered spike heels, "these are hers" she said pointing to her mother. (Later we looked at the label, "Manolo Blahnik," Flora said, sounding almost apologetic.)

Designer Naeem Khan chatted to Anthony Todd with his wife Ranjana, who wore a dress of her own creation that could have come straight from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean, complete with sheer netting and shells. They mused on why the sale was called POSH, "I don't know, but it's a word we use in India a lot," said Ranjana, "we were all taught the Queen's English."

Stacey Bendet had taken POSH to a new level by carrying her own flask full of Champagne. "It's Caitlin's birthday," she said by way of an excuse, pointing to one of the girls, her fingernails painted in jail-stripe black and white. 

Guests were finally herded into the Plaza's Belle Époque-inspired dining room. The Observer sat next to the king of fur, Dennis Basso, who told us that he used to volunteer for Lighthouse and read to the blind. "I thought I'd be reading them journals, magazines and so forth. They gave me a man who was studying microbiology and I had to read these incredibly complicated scientific tracts to him. Every other word, he'd have to make me stop and explain it to me. The blind man was telling me how to read!  We soon decided that it wasn't for me and that I was much better at recording readings." 

The evening's hosts got up one by one to make speeches. Co-founder and Lifetime Visionary award winner Kim Baker Campbell made a sweetly rambling speech in her 1930's movie star tones about her "entire Baker family" and named them all, including step-children.

Bergdorf Goodman's SVP, Women's Fashion Director Linda Fargo also received a Lifestyle Visionary award and finally explained the origins of the word POSH. It came from traveling in the best cabins on the legendary Cunard Cruise Line to from England to India, those which avoided the glare of the sun: Port Out and Starboard Home.

As the clock stuck the witching hour (in this case about 10:15) guests drifted out the door, their multi-colored frocks spread out into New York's city streets like a rainbow fan. -Daisy Prince

Gossip writer Paula Froelich opened the front door to her one-bedroom Soho apartment on a recent evening, wearing a flattering emerald dress with puffy sleeves and woolly, moccasin-style slippers.

She had one hour, she warned, before she had to run out and meet Daily Candy founder Dany Levy and socialite Gigi Howard for an 8 p.m. dinner at Minetta Tavern. But she wanted to make sure the Daily Transom had a chance to drop by her apartment.

“I’m obsessed with this building,” she said of the Sullivan Street walk-up, described in detail in her new novel, Mercury in Retrograde, due out in early June from Atria Books.

She bent down to feed her dachshund, Karl, who was milling about at her feet after being dropped off by a doggy daycare sitter. “It’s like a mini neighborhood. That’s the thing about New York isn’t it? There are so many people behind the walls. They’re like cockroaches!”

Ms. Froelich’s novel, crammed with designer names and winking society references, is of the Manhattan chick lit genre. It is about three women brought together at 148 Sullivan (the author’s actual address) by a series of unfortunate events. Penelope Mercury (read: Paula Froelich) is a resident in the building who quits her job as a door-stepping reporter at a tabloid called the New York Telegraph. Lena “Lipstick” Lippencrass, a socialite, moves into the building after getting cut off by her father. And Dana Gluck, a corporate lawyer, takes the penthouse after her investment banker husband leaves her for a Russian model.

“They’re all composites of me,” said Ms. Froelich, sitting back in a gray velvet armchair in her cozy living room accented by a furry white rug and Hamptons-style coffee table books. Ms. Froelich speaks loudly, confidently, with a perpetual sense of sarcasm that makes her, at times, a little intimidating and, almost always, impossible to read.

“I knew I wanted to write a women’s book, but what bothers me about women’s books is that a lot of them are like, ‘And they gave themselves one year to get married!’” she said with a mocking, fairy-tale inflection in her voice. “It’s really misogynistic in a way.” (The characters in Mercury pursue love interests, but only after their respective lives and jobs are settled.)

Ms. Froelich, 35, has spent almost a decade as a Page Six reporter. She moved to the city 11 years ago from Los Angeles where she took the bus to a clerk job at Ace Hardware—“I moved here for the public transportation,” she said—and briefly worked at the Queens Gazette, at Institutional Investor writing a newsletter called Derivatives Week, and at Dow Jones newswires covering the same beat. Then someone recommended she apply for a job at Page Six.

“I was like, Page Six? What’s that?” she recalled. Ms. Froelich applied and got the job despite lacking experience outside the finance beat. For the next two years, she went out every night. Then she suffered a crack-up, she said, and slept for approximately a month.

Given the demanding lifestyle of a gossip reporter, Ms. Froelich’s personal life—much like her characters’—hasn’t gone exactly as she planned.

“I’m from Ohio. I thought I would be married with three kids by now,” she said. “But I’m really glad I’m not. I look back at the men I’ve dated, with the exception of one guy, and I think, ‘Wow, that would have been the biggest mistake.’”

Ms. Froelich said there was that one time when she was close to getting married. So what happened? “Well, you never want to get into something where you think, ‘Well, there’s always divorce!'”

In recent years, Ms. Froelich has slowed down a bit and doesn’t go out quite as much. Still, the near decade she’s spent collecting anecdotes about the conquests, failures, and public embarrassments of New York’s powerfuls proved useful when it came time to write her novel.

“I have a sick rolodex,” she bragged, stroking mascara into her eyelashes at the bathroom mirror. “Page Six has given me a Ph.D. in human psychology. Take any person and, within five minutes, I can tell you what’s going on, what they’re thinking, where they’re from, and how they’re dressed. And I’m usually 99 percent right.”

While Ms. Froelich insisted that her book is not a roman a clef, certain characters in the novel sound eerily familiar. There are socialites named Muffy and Fabiola and Ivanka; a New York politician disgraced by his regular visits to prostitutes; a blond socialite with corkscrew curls rated No. 1 on a Web site called Socialstatus.com; and a powerful publicist who crashes her SUV into a crowd of people lined up outside a club in the Hamptons.

“She’s a com-pah-zit!” Ms. Froelich said out about the car-crashing character inspired by famous flack Lizzie Grubman. “You write about what you know, but it’s not a thinly veiled thing at all. Even the characters at the newspaper are not anyone who works at the Post.”

Socialite Lydia Hearst is one of the few society girls called out by name in the book for her relentless self-promotion. Upon seeing Ms. Hearst on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, an older socialite says, “Just look at those tacky Hearsts.”

“That, actually, someone said to me. One of the old society matrons was appalled,” explained Ms. Froelich. “I actually like Lydia. She makes me laugh. I used to save her Page Six Magazine columns and read them out loud in character.”

Ms. Froelich was applying blush now and lining her eyes with a dark pencil.

“I think society is pretty much dead,” she said. “Nan Kempner and Brooke Astor would be rolling in their graves. It’s all about girls who talk about careers, but really they just want to be aligned with a brand. Who knew you could make a career out of posing for Patrick McMullan?”

Unlike other gossip writers, Ms. Froelich said she’s always firmly understood the difference between being a reporter and becoming subject for gossip columns herself.

“This is a job and you cannot be good at your job if you want to be the person you’re covering,” she said.  “There was a time a few years ago when people were passing out fame like subway passes, but I think most of them have been weeded out.”

Being “good” at her job sometimes means writing about people she is friendly with socially. But, according to Ms. Froelich, she rarely regrets the stories she reports. “I sleep just fine,” she said.

Ms. Froelich, who has survived departed Page Six colleagues like Ian Spiegelman and Chris Wilson, is one of those media people that everyone always says has been at their jobs forever. And according to Ms. Froelich, she has no plans of moving on. (She is, however, working on a sequel to Mercury and is in talks with Cynthia Eagan, head of the Poppy imprint at Little, Brown Book Group, who acquired the Gossip Girl books, to write a young adult novel about her time attending high school at a convent in Kentucky.)

“At first I thought, yes, after two years, I’ll do something else, but the Post has been really good to me. There was no reason to go,” said Ms. Froelich. “I wanted to take my time and figure out what I wanted to do. I know I’m not Liz [Smith] and I’m not Cindy [Adams]. Otherwise, I’m not real sure. So until I figure it out, it’s good.”

But has Ms. Froelich ever grown tired of covering the same beat?

Ms. Froelich looked to the side and tensed up her lips in a pucker for a moment. “Honey, people get tired of everything,” she finally said. “Ask me how I feel tomorrow.”

She slipped on a pair of Miu Miu shoes and signaled the Daily Transom to file out of her apartment. She had a dinner to get to.

Kim Cattrall, who has served as Celebrity Chair of the event for the past three years (and donated many items from … you know … THAT show) bought two handbags, one an Yves Saint Laurent previously owned by Ms. Kempner.

“I spent two weeks with Nan when I was filming Bonfire of the Vanities,” she said, combing the racks and proudly declaring: “I’m back to a size 6!”

But the consensus among even the most X-ray-eyed shoppers was that hardly anyone was thin enough to fit into Ms. Kempner’s outfits, which were hung on hangers festooned with “NK” tags.

One exception was Norris Mailer, wife of writer Norman, who was disappointed that one of Ms. Kempner’s belts was too big for her tiny waist, and settled for a chocolate-brown leather jacket. Her daughter-in-law, musician Sasha Lazard (wife of Michael Mailer), was not so lucky.

“I’m not a size two,” she said.

One person Hoovering up on Ms. Kempner’s collection—appropriately enough , since much of it had previously been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute—was Hamish Bowles, the European editor-at-large of Vogue.

“I’m buying for my private collection, and I came for Nan's clothes," he said, after stripping a black velvet gown off a mannequin and tossing it to his assistant. "She was such a fashion icon," he gushed.

His favorite Kempner purchase of the evening: a straw bowler hat.

When Joan Rivers arrived, she made a beeline for a tan suede John Galliano jacket with embroidered flowers. "I donated this!" she said proudly.

"And the only reason they got it is because I gained five pounds.”

The Transom could relate, as it failed to squeeze into a navy Ungaro suit. Amazingly, however, a Nan Kempner black jacket by the same designer fit beautifully.

The Transom jealously guarded its treasure, as everyone knows that the simple act of shopping for charity can quickly devolve into a full-blown couture catfight.

"I almost punched out Pat Buckley at a Seventh on Sale,” Ms. Rivers said.

"What the hell, I might as well be honest," Ms. Kempner said by phone. "I just think it's terribly expensive, and I've been doing this party for God knows how many years." Ms. Kempner said that she'd been at it since the 70's-including the Diana Vreeland years-and her name appears on the current list of benefit committee members. "It's always been fun and attractive, but it seems to me it's gotten a little out of hand," she said.

What did Ms. Kempner mean by "out of hand"? When asked if she meant that the ticket price seemed ostentatious against the backdrop of the war in Iraq and our foundering economy, she brushed that aside. "I think it was all planned before the war and the economy, and I don't think it has anything to do with taste or judgment. I just think it has to do with interest, and it has to do with desire to go," she said. "Who knows? Maybe it's Seventh Avenue blackmail. It's the old story: People love to see and be seen, and I guess if you have to pay that much to do so …. "

Yet looking at the list of committee members- Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, Gucci Group creative director Tom Ford and Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman are co-chairing the event, and the benefit committee includes actor Tom Hanks, designer Donatella Versace, hip-hop impresario Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun and his interior-designer wife Mica, apple-cheeked actress Renée Zellweger, and model Stephanie Seymour and her art-collecting husband Peter Brant-I told Ms. Kempner there didn't seem to be too many on that list who couldn't afford the price tag.

"Well, exactly," she said, "but maybe it's the same group of people that get asked to everything and feel they want to support everything, and sometimes maybe it gets a little out of hand."

But the Costume Institute gala has always been different. It's the last truly grand public ball in New York, the "Party of the Year," the last photograph-worthy benefit that would have pleased Wharton and Vreeland, not to mention Avedon. There isn't much in New York anymore, not for the classy, statuesque and exhibitionistic; not for layered class arrangement that combines media, society and fashion. When New York was sucking in the wealth-power-narcissism cocktail of the 90's, nothing seemed more natural than the Costume Institute gala, with its bracing onslaught of celebrity and style, as Puff Daddy and Gwyneth Paltrow flowered alongside Ms. Kempner, Carolina Herrera and Ms. Wintour. New York was creating a new society consistent with its new affluence.

Two years ago, the Met went deep by using its most accessible available legend, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as the center of a traffic-stopping exhibit and the gala. The trouble is, New York has a weak bench right now. Ms. Wintour is the real thing, there's no question about that: With her Nefertiti eternality and an emotional adjustment to post-90's above-chill human contact, the Vogue editor is shimmying up to near-legend status. She even has had a novel written about her, which-good or bad-puts her in Blackgama territory. In December 1999, she had photos of Mick Jagger above her crowd at the Met in a white suit with a white Kangol hat-the last display of jolting glamour before the millennium, the crash and the deflation of New York.

Now it's 2003, and the choice of theme for the resurrection of the big party is "Goddess." The idea of "Goddess" in New York City in this decade seems fraught and a little wishful. For one thing, New Yorkers-and Americans in general-have been less in a Dionysian than a Mars-like mode in the past year.

The ingredients seem to be in place for the party as massive marketing event, as only a gigantic fashion conglomerate paired with its co-dependent ally, a giant media conglomerate (Gucci is underwriting the event with, according to press materials, "additional support" from Condé Nast), can throw. But the event's organizers certainly are aware of what's at stake. "I think everyone at the museum is sensitive to global events and to not in any way making the event look inappropriate," Ms. Wintour told me by phone. "I do feel that the museum and the trustees expect us to be … not over the top and opulent, but still I think people are ready to go out and have a party."

And the Vogue editor observed that Mr. Ford, with whom she is working, "has a very minimal aesthetic anyway.

"It's not his sensibility to do things very grandiose or lavish. So, I think we're all completely on the same page with this." In terms of details, she said, "we're thinking of using cherry blossoms because those are in flower at that time, and just doing things that are very optimistic and in tune with the season, and hopefully in tune with the theme of the show. And we have our own favorite goddess coming."

That would be Ms. Kidman?

"What else can you ask for?" Ms. Wintour said.

Diana Ross, if you're Mr. Ford. The former Supreme is scheduled to perform a few numbers for the dinner crowd and, after her much-publicized D.U.I. arrest video escapade late last year, will add a frisson of lawlessness to a party populated by those who tend to travel in chauffeured Town Cars. Ms. Wintour said that Mr. Ford's idea to have her perform was "genius, because his [last fashion] show was a little bit of an homage to Diana Ross. And he had it on the soundtrack, and we also wanted someone that was a music goddess." (Mr. Ford did not respond to requests for an interview.) "And we just couldn't think of anyone that could be better." Ashanti will perform for the after-dinner crowd.

The after-dinner tickets will cost $250-which, according to Emily Rafferty, the Met's senior vice president for external affairs, are $50 less than the equivalent tickets were in 2001. "That's in recognition of the economic reality of the times," she said, adding that many of the people who attend that after-party are younger workers in fashion and other fields that haven't fared well in the current economy.

And as Harold Holzer, the vice president for communications and marketing, noted, the price for dinner tickets has remained the same since 2001. Prior to that, they were $2,500.

"I think people understand that this is a museum with 18 different curatorial departments," Mr. Holzer said. "One of those museums is the Costume Institute, which has fund-raising requirements to maintain its exhibition schedule and scholarly work and one of the most fragile collections in the building. So it's a huge and expensive task. It's not only a job, but a responsibility that the museum assumes on behalf of the public. So we can't very well say that the major source of revenue for one of our museums within the museum has to be shut down at any given time."

Save Ms. Wintour and the giant, chilly visages of Christy Turlington smiling down from every other Ann Taylor window, we've burned through a lot of gods and goddesses since the century turned. We won't even bring them up now; it would only make you sad. Back in the 90's, the complaint was that the Meritocracy had hijacked the Costume Institute gala from Society's Old Guard-and the residue of that sentiment can be found in Ms. Kempner's comments-but at a moment in which the Bush administration is trying to effect a New World Order, it's only a matter of time before that trickles down into our culture.

And we're already seeing the beginnings of it. The rise of the Meritocracy is the reason that Madonna can be found on this year's benefit committee-just a few years ago, ;the thought of it would have provoked a revolt among the museum's trustees. But the symbolism is muted because, right now, so is Madonna. The onetime queen of culture shock-her Sex book came out when people were still surprised by that kind of thing, in 1992 B.C. (Before Clinton)-has gone from being the duchess of brusque statement to the queen of sensitivity, pulling her "American Life" video, according to a statement released by her camp, "due to the volatile state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I support and pray for," and because "I do not want to risk offending anyone who might misinterpret the meaning of this video."

It's unclear whether Madonna will attend the Costume Institute gala-her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, did not return a call to her office-but there will be plenty more like her at the party, and that's why it should mark a very interesting moment in the city's cultural history. Not only because this really is the first Oscars-caliber party in New York since Sept. 11, one presided over by both Ms. Wintour and the forces of Condé Nast as well as Mr. Ford and the forces of Gucci, with a little help from the giggly and weepy Ms. Kidman. This is also the night when Manhattan's elite will either see the end of an era-one that would fit in with the Directoire and Empire-period gowns that will be among those on display-or the beginning of a new one.

"It was a very nice personal party for many, many years," said Ms. Kempner. "And everybody was interested in fashion and interested in seeing each other and interested in seeing the show and interested in having it be a success-and, well, I just haven't really talked to anybody about it, so I don't really know …. I just don't feel as if I really have any part of this, except to put up my money and go.

And then Ms. Kempner said: "I just feel that it's gotten … along with most of society, it's become an event."

The Met has what sounds like perfectly legitimate reasons for charging what it's charging for a ticket to this year's gala, and we'll get to them in a moment. But in the dissonance of Ms. Kempner's comments-and while she's alone on this page, she's not alone in her perspective-lies the first big clue that the Costume Institute gala is going to be an important event to witness this year. And not just as a celebrity head count. In the two years since the last one was thrown, the city has endured Sept. 11-the last Costume Institute event was canceled because of it-and the war in Iraq, not to mention an economic swamp-gas effect that is still going strong.

The city's social scene and benefit circuit has carried on, but in a muted and conflicted state. It's hard to tell what New York needs more right now-philanthropy or glamour. Denied of either, we become Albany. But, as Ms. Kempner's comments indicate, the city's deep pockets are feeling hassled and, judging from the Oscars, our celebrities are wary.

And rightfully so. The question is, which will it be?

According to Mr. Holzer, the post–Sept. 11 interruption was the first interruption in the Costume Institute Benefit in more than 50 years.

"Obviously, after 9/11, there were exigent circumstances that suggested this was a time to pause." But, he added, "the pause can't continue forever, or the work won't be able to continue forever. And that's the rationale for doing the event.

Mr. Holzer added that it's worth noting, and it might even be particularly relevant at this moment, that "this is not a monographic show about a designer," as past Costume Institute benefits have been. "It's a show about how surviving classical antiquity has informed and inspired design," he explained. "And having just seen the loss of almost an entire heritage of classical antiquity"-he was referring to the artifacts that had been looted from the Baghdad museums in the days following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime-"having seen it possibly disappear forever, it's not an inappropriate moment to remember how antiquity can inform and inspire today."

And maybe, in the form of a social setting, it can jump-start a city. Ms. Rafferty said that there's already a waiting list for the 750 to 800 dinner seats, and that ticket sales for the after-party were "on par" with the last event.

"We want to give everybody a really good time and to celebrate fashion, which is what we're doing that night. And I just hope it has a very optimistic feel to it," Ms. Wintour said.

Given that the media were reporting that the worst of the fighting was over and that the business of establishing a government in Iraq had begun, I asked Ms. Wintour if maybe the city could breathe a bit.

"Well, the Pentagon's saying that, and I believe them. And I think that people are ready to go out. We did this event two years ago in spring, and it was a real sense of New York society coming together, and it was an opportunity to put on a wonderful new dress and just celebrate and celebrate an incredible institution. And raise money for something that we believe is very much a part of New York's cultural life.

"And when you see Nicole's dress"-which Ms. Wintour said was top secret-"everyone's going to drop dead anyway."

A nifty idea, recording celebrities' dreams. How better to plumb the Rosicrucian mysteries of fame than to peer directly into the famous person's psyche? Let's face it: For all the money and sweat spent trying to dredge up the inner lives of celebrities for public consumption, their most private selves remain irritatingly off-limits! Lauren Lawrence, dream compiler and dream analyst, puts it slightly differently in the introduction to Private Dreams of Public People : "The paparazzi phallic lens zooms into the darkest privacies, intent on mating with the intangible inner being of fame. But only master photographers succeed." Ms. Lawrence then proffers her alternative: " Private Dreams of Public People lets the reader get into bed with the celebrity mind and nestle with its glittery, klieg-lit unconscious."

Never mind whether the notion of getting into bed with something glittery and klieg-lit is appealing; Ms. Lawrence's prose strays closer to Robert James Waller's than one might wish, but she's onto something. I was curious to read about celebrity dreams. Unfortunately, what Ms. Lawrence serves up is a coffee-table book bulked up with lush, glossy photographs of famous people primarily from the fashion and entertainment worlds, strung together by a somewhat skeletal text. Sometimes really skeletal. Juliette Binoche, whose picture not only graces the book's cover but occupies the better part of a two-page spread within, has this much-and only this much-to divulge: "I have often dreamt that I wake up within the dream."

If you're looking for a fresh alternative to InStyle celebrity, keep looking. And yet there's amusement to be had here. Some of the dreams are genuinely revealing, even poignant: Elvis Presley, we learn, told a close friend of a dream he had of being onstage with his twin brother, Jesse, who in reality was stillborn. "He was the spitting image of me except he could sing better," Presley reportedly said. Paul McCartney once told Larry King that the melody for "Yesterday" came to him in a dream. The model Helena Christensen dreamt she was Hitler's mistress. Madonna dreamt that she had killed her unborn child through overwork. The boxing promoter Don King dreamt that his hair was going straight and rising toward heaven. And one week before he died of cancer, the poet Allen Ginsberg dreamt that a bulge in his right side was a full-grown baby, whom he worried his partner would not have the energy to care for.

Most of the dreams are less interesting. Some are so obvious that the reader can't help but suspect that once again, those mulish celebrities have kept the juicy bits to themselves. Model Tyson Beckford drops a real bomb: He sometimes dreams of playing basketball. Luciano Pavarotti unveils a dream in which he watches Orson Welles play Othello and then takes his place in the performance. Ivana Trump dreamt of winning a gold medal skiing and then being applauded by her children. Socialite Nan Kempner dreamt of riding with Mikhail Baryshnikov on the Concorde, where, she reveals, "I meet the most wonderful people on the plane and have great conversations above the clouds."

Ms. Lawrence, who has a master's degree in psychology, includes this bouquet in her analysis of Ms. Kempner's dream: "Dreamt by anyone other than Nan this dream would be considered a wish. In Nan's case she is living her dream-living high, living fast, and definitely first class." The big challenge for Ms. Lawrence is how to transform each dream, no matter how familiar, sparse or dull, into an occasion for congratulating the celebrity. Here is Joan Collins' dream in its entirety: "I often dream that there is a young girl with me, around four or five years old. Sometimes she's left behind and I have to go get her." Ms. Lawrence's analysis begins: "No wonder this diva of Dynasty is a timeless beauty. Just look at her dream. The young girl who often accompanies Joan is the dreamer herself, tapping into a reservoir of kinetic energy and youthful exuberance." Yeah, right. Ms. Collins is youthfully kinetic. The froth of praise feels almost compulsive, like a waiter who heaps approval on your choice of entrée.

At times, the boosterism seems to cut off more intriguing interpretive routes. Candace Bushnell, the only woman among eight "Literary Dreamers" included in the collection, is quoted thus: "I keep having horrible nightmares that blood is coming out of my mouth." Ms. Lawrence hastens to assure us that "what may seem gruesome is actually hot and gutsy-the blood that trickles from her mouth is her life blood-and means that her writing is pure and true, because it comes from the heart." One suspects that Ms. Lawrence either knows most of these people personally, or hopes to.

When she isn't fawning, her analysis-a mélange of Freud, Jung and New Age spirituality-has its moments of loopy appeal. Milos Forman recounts a vivid dream in which he's standing outside his childhood home, hand on the doorknob, when a witch hidden in the bushes grabs him and throws him into "never ending space." Ms. Lawrence persuasively interprets this as an allegory of masturbation and punishment. The comedian Denis Leary (whose first name is spelled two different ways in the book) presents a dream in which Madonna asks him to breast-feed her baby in a taxicab driven by weatherman Al Roker. Lawrence handily responds, "By using reversal, Dennis wants Madonna to breast-feed him; by using displacement, Madonna is the baby that Dennis wants to breast-feed. This implies that Mr. Leary has in mind some other method of satisfaction. He has the concealed wish to substitute the breast for the male organ."

As amusing as anything in the book itself is a small section at the end headed "Declinations" (the word is actually in the dictionary; I checked): remarks by those who declined to be included in Private Dreams . A number of people, including Fran Lebowitz, Donald Trump and Scottie Pippen, claimed they either don't sleep or don't dream. Tommy Lee Jones said, "My dreams are not fit to read." Henry Kissinger said, "It's not my style." Glenn Close had the best response, I thought: "If I gave you my dream it wouldn't be my dream anymore." Ah, how true. Though it promises intimate access, Private Dreams amounts to an inch or two of filigree on the sprawling, ubiquitous apparatus of celebrity promotion. But hey, the pictures are great.

Jennifer Egan is the author of Look at Me (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) and The Invisible Circus (Picador USA).

More than the court designer to a certain set of Park Avenue ladies, Bill Blass was the token gentleman of the gang: Nina Griscom, Anne Bass, Nan Kempner, Judy Peabody, Carolyne Roehm. He was the maker of the perfect $4,000 I-have-a-lunch suit, and a healthy diet of timeless evening gowns for incessant benefit-going. He was never cutting edge. He was all American. He was the name sewn into Nancy Reagan's neckline.

"Bill's just marvelous," said Anne Slater, a longtime customer and friend. "God really did a dance around him! He's a major delight! He's a blissful Blass!"

That must explain why Mr. Blass' hand-picked replacement, a 40-year-old from Detroit named Steven Slowik, has the tenuously eager air of a man who might at any moment burst into tears-despite the fact that he smiles a lot. In December, Mr. Slowik was hired to assume another man's name and seduce away all of his ladies. With everyone watching!

Mr. Slowik's first rendezvous was on Feb. 16, at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria honoring Mr. Blass for his work for the Lighthouse Foundation, a charity serving the blind. In a ballroom, the ex-designer introduced his successor to his harem. But the chemistry was lacking, what with the other man right in the same room plying everyone with meatloaf and oatmeal cookies from his own recipes.

" Judy Peabody !" said Mr. Slowik a few weeks later. "I've admired her for so long. It was amazing to meet everyone."

"He seemed like a most attractive young man," said Ms. Peabody. "And I was very pleased to meet him. But I can't believe that Mr. Blass isn't going to have a finger in the pie. His presence is so powerful, his personality, I mean. But I'm sure Mr. Slovak will bring his own talent and creativity."

The name's Slowik.

"I certainly don't know who Steven Floric is," said long-time Blass buddy Peter Duchin. "I've never heard his name in my life. What is he, of Polish descent? Now that's a great idea: a Polish designer! … What is it again?"

Slowik.

"Having the name Bill Blass remain makes it very hard," said Nina Griscom.

"Tough act to follow!" said Nan Kempner.

"Big shoes to fill!" said Aileen Mehle.

Somewhat sympathetically-somewhat sadistically-Mr. Blass has been otherwise out of the picture for several months, relaxing in Litchfield County, Conn. "I love not working!" he said.

When he sold his company for an estimated $50 million in October to his largest licensee and his chief financial officer, it was understood that he would find an appropriate match for the faithful women he dresses. Mr. Blass did his homework. For the past several seasons, Michael Kors has been behaving like a new Bill Blass for the junior society set-the Lauders, Millers and Boardmans-much to the dismay of many critics who find his look recycled. So what was in order was not a next-generation Bill Blass, it was more of what women love most about Blass-that they can wear the gowns again and not feel dated and that though the clothes are not particularly ambitious from a design perspective, they will certainly flatter.

Randolph Duke was recently out of a job at Halston, and quickly became a front-runner. But Mr. Slowik had a quieter thing happening, which Mr. Blass admired, though the two had never met. "I kind of like the idea that he's not generally known," said Mr. Blass. "It gives him a sleeper quality when he does arrive."

Mr. Slowik, like Madonna, grew up in Detroit, where, as a boy, he would read fashion magazines, get decked out in hip-huggers and platform shoes and dream of meeting the likes of the Great Mister Blass. "He was amazing!"

It was a cold March afternoon and Mr. Slowik, boyish, tall and sort of strapping, with fluffy highlighted hair, bushy eyebrows and deep laugh lines, was standing in the Seventh Avenue office where Mr. Blass designed his line for 40 years. "Mr. Blass left all of his books for me," he said. He was wearing pressed black pants and a white oxford shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal a white V-neck T-shirt underneath. He surveyed the shelves of bound Vogue s and Harper's Bazaar s. "Wasn't that nice?"

A loud remix from a fashion shoot in the next room bounced around his office. Mr. Slowik said he likes opera and club music. "The clubs in New York?" he said. "Forget it. London is so much fun."

Mr. Slowik first came to New York in the 80's to learn his trade at Parsons School of Design. There were stints as an assistant at Albert Nippon, and then at Calvin Klein. He interviewed once to work at Blass Sport, but he didn't get the job. "I sat in here," he said, "on the other side of the desk, and I couldn't believe I was actually meeting him."

In 1986, he was lured to Europe as head designer at Ferragamo, maker of horsy clothes and scarves for bleached Italian matrons. His designs there were consistently solid, if not ground-breaking. Conservative, classic, well constructed, certainly adhering to the Blass ethos that traveled right through the whole deconstructionist trend without batting an eyelash.

Mr. Slowik chose to live in Paris, rather than in Milan, and it was from there that he launched his own, private label. It was small, and financing came in the form of pockets emptied on the kitchen table. He made suits and mix-and-match separates. "I had a lot of support emotionally," he said. In New York, Barneys, Saks, Henri Bendel and Bergdorf Goodman carried the collection, and his customers tended to be "more professional women": doctors and lawyers.

Mr. Blass admired Mr. Slowik's connections in Europe, where Bill Blass is almost unknown. Expanding in Europe certainly seems on the agenda, since Mr. Slowik is keeping his place in Paris as well as closing a deal on an apartment in the West Village. Before his new office furniture had arrived, he was already packing for the European fabric shows where he would select materials for the spring collection, to be shown in Bryant Park in September.

Relax. Mr. Slowik does not plan any drastic changes. "I mean, some people do crazy, out-there things, and, well, I'm so glad they're doing it, but that's not me," he said. "Mr. Blass always did beautiful, wearable clothes and I don't want to change that." Then his face became serious. "I have a very good sense of color."

"I'm pretty intuitive as a rule," Mr. Blass said. "I felt strongly he'd be a good guy for the job. A person who's clever and can adjust to the situation he's put in."

As for his luck with the ladies?

"My ladies?" said Mr. Slowik. "Are my friends, I guess."

After the masses from New York's fashion week trample into Ms. Westwood's new 7,000-square-foot boutique on Greene Street–a former art gallery, how appropriate–for the opening-night party, the rest of the city will be welcomed in to discover that Ms. Westwood has several clothing lines: Gold Label, which approximates couture and includes Ms. Westwood's made-to-order society wedding dresses; Red Label, her finely tailored ready-to-wear collection; Man, a collection with Savile Row influences; and Anglomania, a casual line featuring many pieces from her punk days in the 1970's. Ms. Westwood's first perfume, Boudoir, was launched at the Harvey Nichols store in London last fall and will be available here in about six months.

The clothes range from the most histrionic costumes to street-inspired jeans and T-shirts. "The idea is, we're not going to settle for all the crap, the mass-market identikit," Ms. Westwood said on Feb. 4 from Paris, where she was conducting some business. "Our clothes have a rapport with the body and tell a story."

Ms. Westwood, 58, is even showing her fall-winter 1999 Red Label collection at high noon on Feb. 16 in the Celeste Bartos Forum at the New York Public Library, rather than in London, where she is based. But will Americans get her?

Nan Kempner, for one, is ready to wear Westwood. "Oh, goody!" Ms. Kempner said, when she heard of the designer coming to town. "I'll give her a lunch, maybe on the 11th." Unfortunately, the British Consulate, which is honoring Ms. Westwood on Feb. 11, just as the final racks of clothes will be pouring into SoHo, has scooped Mrs. Kempner.

"New York needs new blood, don't you think?" Mrs. Kempner said.

"The erudition of her work makes Americans very suspicious," said Richard Martin, curator of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, of Ms. Westwood's designs. "Maybe the recent attention to Paris couture has trained Americans more in a certain sense of historicism, but Americans look for casualness. Simplicity. The classic issue of being modern."

Ms. Westwood won't be labeled modern–or anything else, really. "This word 'modern' is just another ism, another category," Ms. Westwood said. "I'm sorry, darlin', if you've heard this before," her voice a planed soprano with gentle, but pert, duchesslike punctuations. "Cloth and the human body. I have to make cloth give expression to the body. The whole load of possibilities inspires me."

Although Ms. Westwood began her design career using the iconography of rebels, she said, "Rebellion wasn't enough for me because it wasn't rebellious enough. People loved it." Now she finds history refreshing. "But I completely deny any allegation that I blunder history! Most people don't go as far back as I do, that's all."

In his 1989 book, Chic Savages , fashion publisher John Fairchild calls Vivienne Westwood one of the top six designers in the world, in the company of Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Lacroix. "Of the six, British Vivienne Westwood is the designer's designer, watched by intellectual and far-out designers including Jean Paul Gaultier. She is copied by the avant-garde French and Italian designers because she is the Alice in Wonderland of fashion.… Yet, copied as she is," Mr. Fairchild also observed, "Westwood struggles in her World's End shop in London, living hand to mouth."

Disarray is a subtext in Vivienne Westwood's work. Her punk designs in the 1970's and her deconstructivist collections in the early 1980's paved the way for the Japanese deconstructionists Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, as well as Belgian designers Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela. She has championed fashion as a platform for political and personal rebellion.

Alas, not necessarily the stuff of mass-market American fashion. But the SoHo store may draw traffic, anyway. At the center is an elevated stage in a graphic herringbone pattern, surrounded by mirrors and lit by a pair of Swarovski chandeliers. There are several dressing rooms just off stage. "Slightly eccentric, I hope," said Mr. Collins, whose clients include Madonna and the John Barrett Salon atop Bergdorf Goodman. "It looks like Vivienne might have designed it herself."

Born in Derbyshire in 1941, Ms. Westwood lived above her mother's general store. She learned about fashion from reading the magazines in the shop. "As a child, I was in waiting," Ms. Westwood has said. Her warmest recollections of growing up are reading books in a sunny meadow. She is married to her business partner, Andreas Kronthaler, who is 25 years her junior, and she has two grown sons from previous marriages.

In 1993, Ms. Westwood entered into a licensing deal with Japan's Itochu Corporation. From $400,000 that year, Ms. Westwood's business annual revenue increased to almost $9.5 million in 1995. A 1996 campaign to appoint her designer in chief at Christian Dior failed when her discomfort during the interview process, as well as her reputation as a renegade, dissuaded executives at the French firm. Instead, they hired John Galliano, whose work Ms. Westwood considers derivative of her own.

Recalling her first visit to New York in the early 70's with Malcolm McLaren for a fashion show, Ms. Westwood said, "We didn't sell much, except we met the New York Dolls and went to Max's Kansas City every night, so I did enjoy it. But I was surprised to find New York much more dilapidated than I imagined. Holes in the roads and taxis bumpin' up and down." She paused. "I suppose America is very glamorous for people who believe in the 20th century."

"Those marvelous, black, cotton lace stockings I call my Sharon Stones," Mrs. Kempner said. "Elastic at the waist, plastic shoes inside, all you see is the black stocking and about an eight-inch red crocodile heel. I wore them to a very swinging party downtown. Tommy Kempner opted out of the evening, so when I got home I leaned over to give him a big kiss," Mrs. Kempner's narrative included a huge, smacking-kiss sound, "and when I straightened up the heel of my left leg, it caught the lace of my right stocking. Like an albatross, I teetered over most awkwardly. My right hip smashed to smithereens."

It's been three months since the hip was replaced, and what pain she has, Mrs. Kempner said, she pretends isn't there. She even intended to take a try at horseback riding in the country. "It's fine," she deadpanned, "if I don't fall off."

The car was headed for the Thomas Healy Gallery at 530 West 22nd Street in Chelsea for the opening of Bathroom , a summer exhibition curated by author Wayne Koestenbaum. Mrs. Kempner was curious. As the driver slowed near Bergdorf's, Mrs. Kempner craned her neck, but couldn't quite see the windows for a raging Fifth Avenue bus.

"I told them the story at Dior," Mrs. Kempner said, laughing. "I expected a bunch of flowers, but didn't get it."

As the car stopped just in front of the Prada boutique, which is being put together on the site of the Doubleday bookshop at Fifth Avenue south of 57th Street. Mrs. Kempner volunteered that she is in the planning stages of writing a book.

"Oh, I went to this marvelous tea party in London some time ago and met this adorable man, Ed Victor, a literary agent. He said, 'You've got to write a book and I'm your agent.' He's arranged everything the way he thinks it should be arranged."

"It's a name-dropper's cookbook," she explained. "I'm capitalizing on all my friendships." She and a photographer and a stylist will spend the greater part of the summer chronicling parties given by her friends. Hopefully, they will include Marguerite Littman in London, Ann Getty in San Francisco, Betsy Bloomingdale in Los Angeles, Jackie de Ravenal in Nassau and the McAlpines in Venice, among others. "We'll include a copy of the invitation. The hostess will write out his or her menu, and we'll photograph the house and party." It will be called R.S.V.P. , a cookbook and party planning guide; all profits will go to the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Sort of Mrs. Dalloway meets Martha Stewart. Clarkson Potter is interested in publishing the book.

Right up her alley, Mrs. Kempner said. "I'm never bored. If I ever am, I just start planning menus."

She remembered when she and Mr. Kempner were first married after World War II. They lived in a London flat so small, they couldn't get out of bed at the same time, there wasn't room. But it was in London she began giving dinner parties nonetheless. "There was still some rationing around, but we had great food, I think. Our parents used to vie with each other to see who could send the best food packages."

For today's outing, Mrs. Kempner wore a black linen Yves Saint Laurent safari-style shirt and a beige skirt by Oliver, "Valentino's cheap line." No stockings. "My great economy is, when the weather gets hot, I give up tights." Despite the slip with her hip, she wore four-inch Christian Dior pumps. "I don't know how to walk in flats," she said.

The press release about Bathroom said the show would focus "not on fluids and solids but on the furniture of hygiene: It will be, perversely, a clean show, evoking the melancholia and silence of the Cold War American bathroom, in which the ruling dichotomies were control and release, shame and pleasure, privacy and community."

"I don't know what they're talking about," Mrs. Kempner said on hearing this. "I love my bathroom. I painted it pink, so it isn't such a shock to look at oneself in the morning."

The car turned west on 23rd Street, and Chelsea's citizens were revealed. Crossing the street, a muscular young man with the face of a choirboy except he was dressed thusly: tucked into tight jeans and a black leather harness. What an odd tan line this outfit will beget in broad daylight, Mrs. Kempner imagined.

"Look, there's a Beetle!" I pointed across the street to a shiny new Volkswagen.

"A bug in the car?" she responded.

At the gallery, the first image Mrs. Kempner came upon was Neil Winokur's photograph of a toilet. Then John Waters' installation, 12 Assholes and a Dirty Foot . Tom Healy and Wayne Koestenbaum, dressed in suits and ties–the height of postmodernist subversion or simply new clothes?–greeted her. The opening of Bathroom wasn't running quite on time, it was still being installed, they apologized.

"You can hear the paper being ripped away," Mr. Koestenbaum said.

"Around here," Mrs. Kempner responded, recognizing one of Andy Warhol's "piss" paintings, "I'm not sure what's being ripped away."

Mr. Koestenbaum said the idea for Bathroom was inspired by "a lifelong interest in the subject which I share with all of humanity."

Mrs. Kempner asked for clarification about his description of the Cold War American bathroom.

"Private life was very bordered during the Cold War," Mr. Koestenbaum said.

"Very private," Mrs. Kempner said. "I still like separate bathrooms."

"I insist," said Mr. Koestenbaum.

Admiring George Stoll's cotton flannel and silk toilet paper rolls with dainty floral motif, Mrs. Kempner shared that she almost got kicked out of school one Halloween. "We'd found some old toilet and left it on the lawn of a very grand house."

"It was art," Mr. Koestenbaum enthused. "You were anarchist dadaists."

Back in the car, heading north on the West Side Highway, Mrs. Kempner said, "What the hell. One likes to stay, as they say, abreast."

Billy's List: Quiz Time!

1. Nelson Mandela is many things, including a snappy dresser. Who tailors his suits?

a. Giorgio Armani.

b. Brioni.

c. Paul Smith.

2. What chic summer rental has model Kate Moss reportedly taken?

a. The Jasper Guinness place near Siena, Italy.

b. One of Ahmet and Mica Ertegun's houses in Turkey.

c. Maxime de la Falaise's farm in the south of France.

3. "Chefs and Champagne" is:

a. the new cookbook by Debbie Reynolds.

b. Anne Rosenzweig's new Q.&A. column in W .

c. a party on July 11 in the Cashamptons to benefit the James Beard Foundation.

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