Nearby, children were struggling with an oversize billiards table.

“Yeah, sorry! There are kids everywhere!” Ms. Astley said. “I always tell my friends to bring their kids. It’s all about kids at TeenVogue! My girls are over there.”

She pointed to two lean preteen beauties slithering quickly across the pool table, wearing T-shirts and unruly blond ponytails. “No, I don’t give them style advice. They’re not interested in style advice. They dress themselves and I think they look great. I love to see what young people choose to wear, even 7- and 10-year-olds.”

Socialite Amanda Brooks’ kids scrambled after the young Astleys. A pool ball shot off the table toward one of the doorways; it went unnoticed as the photographers clamored after designer Vera Wang, who had just made her entrance with her daughter, Josephine Becker, who interned at TeenVogue last summer. “I haven’t read the book yet, but I will,” Ms. Becker said.

Is she planning to go into fashion?

“I haven’t really decided yet, but considering who my mom is, there is a pretty good possibility.”

It’s springtime for Oscar in autumn! We just came from Oscar de la Renta’s Pre-Fall 2008 show, held in an old church on Park Avenue and 63^rd Street. It seems even Old School fashion bigwigs like Mr. De la Renta are starting to acknowledge the fact that balmy temps can, these days, extend well into November.

Sure, there were plenty of black cashmere sweaters, dark brown suede boots, tortoiseshell patent clutches and sepia wool faille jackets to whet the appetites of onlookers like Vogue’s Anna Wintour and, a few seats to her left, Teen Vogue’s Amy Astley. But what really drew a few wide-eyed gasps—and a lone clap—from the modish onlookers was the abundance of color. Bright color—in floral, sequined prints, no less! Circumambulating one another in figure-eights and cockeyed circles, tall models (in even taller boots) stomped around the platter-shaped runway as if in some nightmare runway challenge on ANTM. At least their floral cloqué brocade skirts, harlequin ribbon belts, plum silk georgette dresses and emerald silk hammered satin gowns made it easy to avoid an eminent collision.

After seeing a fur-clad Ms. Wintour beeline towards Mr. De la Renta post-show for a warm congratulatory embrace, debuting the collection while the Rolling Stones’ Under My Thumb played seemed like a great call. Asked what was up with all the bright floral patters for fall, the Dominican-born 75-year-old couturier chocked it up to commerce. “We start delivering this merchandise in May, so people can buy this right away!” he told The Daily Transom with a chuckle after the show.

The collection was, for the most part, classic De la Renta, meaning, of course, that it was also just plain classic. Nearly every frock, every suit could have come—after a few fresh twists and dabs of color—from the closets of femmes Robinson in The Graduate. Mr. De la Renta produced striking new versions of his iconic flowing, heavily-ruffled, door-frame-creaking ball gowns that put his name time and again on the red carpet, via the backs of Hollywood’s leading ladies. (Freakishly-perfect figures sold separately.) There were more offerings, too, of the playful, billowy embroidered skirts that the designer so often pairs with contrasting tailored tops and slim jackets.

“It used to be,” said John Fairchild, the former rip-roaring publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, by phone from the Ritz in Paris, “that you’d go to the theater, you’d write a review. Now people are being politically correct in fashion—they go to the shows and sit there and get a sore bottom. They sort of swim around, and their criticisms are rather soft.

“I think they’re being politically correct because things have changed and everything is advertising-driven,” Mr. Fairchild said. “I think the big thing is that people really are interested in the comings and goings of society and movie stars, rather than writing endless reams of critical descriptions of clothes.”

Still, Mr. Fairchild referred to the reviews as just so much “blah-blah-blah,” noting that, in fashion, it all comes down to the buyers.

He has a point about the “blah.” In late 2000, after the sale of Yves St. Laurent, the influential New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn essentially announced that we now lived in a sad age devoid of fashion titans. This week, she has ladled out just faint (albeit intelligent) praise and the mildest of spankings. It should also be noted that, yesterday, her 950 words on eight different shows were placed on page B11.

More notably, Women’s Wear Daily, which once pronounced disasters and triumphs with the immediacy of a telegram and the force of a heel in the face, has absolutely eviscerated its critical viewpoint.

“I think there’s still a fair amount of critical press out there,” said Fern Mallis, the executive director of the I.M.G.-owned 7th on Sixth, the producers of New York’s Olympus Fashion Week. “If you were the designer, you would think it was critical.”

Feh! Remember when designers would go out of business—or at least flee the country for a bit—after a big slam in the trades? Now it’s far more likely that a publication will go out of business rather than a designer, and that has made all the difference.

Editor in chief Brandusa Niro sat in her office yesterday, picking cover photos for today’s candy-colored edition of The Daily and recovering from the thrills she said she got from the Marc Jacobs, Doo-Ri Chung and Alice Temperely shows.

“I think people have decided some time ago—I don’t know what WWD is doing, and I would never speak for them—but I think people are deciding to give ink to what deserves it, instead of negativity,” she said.

“The times have changed,” Ms. Niro added. “The fashion world is not as bitchy and as nasty as it once was. Personally, I consider it a good thing …. I think everyone’s kinder and gentler because we don’t have enough space to cover the bad stuff.”

On Monday morning, it wasn’t just the yawning white wedding tents that stretched over the lawn, or the rarefied absence of anything resembling a straight man, or the unusually leggy ladies who had replaced the homeless men and mid-level office-workers who normally populate Bryant Park.

It was the country-club types who had lined up bright and early to get into the Carolina Herrera show, twenty- and fortysomething women who had grabbed their pointy shoes (so over!) and Balenciaga bags and Paris-sized engagement rocks (set off against pale cream manicures) and now stood in lemming-like formation waiting for the doors to open.

A tiny epiphany made itself evident about why fashion is so underwhelming these days. It is because it’s being run by these women, for these women, who may have the money to buy fashionable clothes and look all put together, with everything perfectly matched and tucked and creased, but who—unlike the women of Paris—wouldn’t recognize cool if it bitch-slapped them in the face.

But what else can you expect from an industry whose guiding business principle might be described as an aestheticized equivalent of Reaganomics?

Ms. Herrera’s show itself featured drawing-room dullery, waifs wrapped in upholstery fabrics that looked like they’d been ripped from the pool cushions of some Florida hacienda. While some gowns were gorgeous, the most egregious by far was the gauzy sheath dress made from some diaphanous brown fabric dappled with … radishes.

Backstage, star-struck fans pawed their way through the changing room, full of air-kisses. “Let’s just say we’ve been flooded with stories,” said one lanky black-haired fashionista, who was presumably an editor, to a nattily dressed gentleman. “I don’t want to read any more about that hurricane. But what can you do?”

On Friday, the shows began, and in the afternoon it became apparent that designer Brian Reyes had sold himself on the strength of a few lovely sketches. The countless profiles of the upstart designer who managed to blag his way past the authorities to head up design teams at Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren proved that he had also managed to endear himself to the media—without showing them a single dress. Before a teeming audience that included essentials like Vogue’s Sally Singer and André Leon Talley—who perched on a far-away window sill behind the standing section—Mr. Reyes sent out 24 risk-free looks, all excessively, tediously wearable, featuring elements like pencil skirts, flimsy camisoles and low-slung, well-tailored trousers.

At 9 p.m.—after Liev Schreiber, Jimmy Fallon, Gabby Hoffman, Cecily Brown, Rachel Feinstein and Yvonne Force Villareal crammed themselves into the first row at Tara Subkoff’s Imitation of Christ show for an eyeful of denim and dildos—chaos ruled in Bryant Park for Tommy Hilfiger’s 20th-anniversary show. A thin-looking Jay-Z arrived, without Beyoncé. The disappointment was palpable. At 9:10 p.m., the show was over. Jesse Metcalf walked out alone in a green sweater and jeans.

“It wasn’t over the top, but it wasn’t under,” said Princess, a finalist contestant from Mr. Hilfiger’s reality show The Cut. At the back of the tent, a model sneered: “Are you guys going to Crobar?”

At midnight, it was discovered that the Hilfiger models did in fact go to Crobar. They even danced in a cute model circle together. A girl tried to peel one off, plugging his phone number into her cell. “Are you going to remember me if I call you?” she asked. “Yeah,” he said. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Yeah,” he said, “I always remember.”

“Tommy sucks,” said a stylist named Sebastian, who had styled himself in a shredded T-shirt and a burnt-orange fedora. “I didn’t like it all. The show was very outdated. I didn’t get it, especially for the spring. You know what? I think a lot of the creativity has kind of maxed itself out. There’s always room for it—but it seems like people don’t know where to go. There’s been so much done in the past that you have to be very creative to come up with something completely fresh and new. It’s hard to do. So with that said, you have to be one talented motherfucker.”

On Saturday afternoon in the Proenza Schouler Chinatown loft, Lazaro Hernandez held up a light-gray coat with elaborate embroidery and assembly. “The clothes are a lot more expensive this season,” Mr. Hernandez said. He wouldn’t disclose the coat’s price but said it was in the high four figures. “It’s all about discretion,” Jack McCullough said. “A minimal baroque. You see, the people who can afford to will buy clothes, whether they respond to a social context or not, and when they chose to buy a coat from us instead of another brand, they are responding to the discreet luxury of the thing.”

The two business partners were making what looked like very healthy sandwiches with their design, production and casting crews. Racks of their collection stood ready to be fitted: creamy whites, pale grays, charcoals, blacks and a hint of pale green. Spirits were high.

“You know, after we did our last collection, we went on a trip to L.A. and spent a lot of time at the Arts and Crafts Museum,” said Mr. McCullough. “The Arts and Crafts movement,” Mr. Hernandez added, “was a reaction against industrialization, a reaction to mass culture. That’s something that has always interested us.”

The duo followed up their journey west with a trip to the Mayan city Tulum. They weren’t looking for a “cheesy ethnic aesthetic.” What they found was that “there was nothing there.”

“And since there are no sewing machines,” Mr. Hernandez said, “everything is made by hand. And so it’s all about taking time.” They promptly hired a new pattern drafter from Rochas, Nicolas Caito, schooled in the swiftly disappearing techniques of couture.

“Sometimes we find we’re in a bubble,” said Mr. Hernandez.

Models traipsed into the loft to effusive greetings. In a sort of easy dance, the pair worked around the girls, sometimes crouching, standing or rolling around on an office chair in earnest thought. An elaborately crafted and embroidered bolero/ tuxedo ensemble was fitted on a Brazilian model called Anna J.

Anna was asked to walk back and forth. The duo decided wordlessly to change the shape of the trouser. For the next 45 minutes, they sat legs akimbo on either side of the model, pinning and pulling and rearranging, calling in a seamstress and readjusting until the leg was perfect.

Half an hour later, Mr. Hernandez commanded a razorblade to cut three invisible snippets of string from the jacket.

And that night, at Kimora Lee Simmon’s Baby Phat show at Radio City Music Hall, a staffer walked through the crowd asking for Hurricane Katrina donations. He held out a bright blue purse with gold studding. The purse was empty. Star Jones wore an all-white suit.

Sunday night, at 7 p.m., a dark-haired beauty managed to pass beneath the lighting structure of Diane von Furstenberg’s runway just as it fell. She walked offstage like nothing had happened.

“I didn’t understand,” she said outside afterward, blinking gorgeous blue eyes. She took a drag from her cigarette. “I was the first one to go in. And all the girls stopped and ran the other way.”

“You look so amazing,” said her companion, a man in a red fitted T-shirt and jeans, seemingly unaware of the flashing lights and the sirens of the fire truck and the two ambulances behind them. And she did! Even in the face of tragedy, the shiny bouffant hairstyle and feminine, Mediterranean-inspired Dreamscape dress designed by Ms. von Furstenberg were impeccable.

Sarah, Mrs. von Furstenberg’s gorgeous young niece, surveyed the pandemonium and said the show’s abrupt ending was a shame after all of their hard work. “I’m shocked and shaken, but everyone is O.K.,” she said. She felt bad for her aunt. “It’s a lot of work to put on a show, and for this to go and happen …. ”

A woman in a lighting-maintenance uniform held her hand against her forehead with her eyes squeezed shut. The production crew sat cross-legged on the floor inside the entrance tent afterwards, smoking cigarettes and discussing what had happened. What were they going to do next?

“I have no idea,” said one dressed all in black, her brown hair pulled back. They, too, were resignedly smoking cigarettes.

In the St. Vincent’s emergency room, where the lighting-disaster victims had been taken, Ms. von Furstenberg crossed her arms protectively across her chest. “I am just shocked,” she said wearily. She was still clad in one of her bold prints, a pattern of black Celtic braids interspersed with pink diamonds. “But I’m glad that everyone is O.K.”

With that, she was escorted by a gentleman in a beige suit into a dark Mercedes coupe. No one was aware of any after-party.

Designer Matthew Earnest, the ginger-haired 26-year-old Texan who was known for his exceedingly preppy aesthetic until he sat out last season, had spent the last two months in his tiny one-bedroom, subsisting on three hours of sleep, large amounts of caffeine and “background noise” to put together his new collection.

On Monday, mere minutes before his show, several pieces had still not arrived from production. But when the lights dimmed at 12:20 p.m., and his first model stomped onto the runway so hard she brought down a sign attached to the wall, a collective sigh of relief could be heard. Monochromes, plexiglass, contrast stitching and an almost architectural structuring called to mind Courrèges.

At 3 p.m., Fern Mallis sauntered through the tents. Fashion Week has grown, she said—2,700 people from 1,000 media outlets. But has all this growth come at the expense of innovation?

“It depends on how you define innovation,” she said. “When we started these shows in 1993, everybody thought by 2000 everybody would be running around in silver Mylar jumpsuits.” Oh, aren’t we, Ms. Mallis?

Nearby, Full Frontal Fashion’s gumshoe fashion correspondent Lloyd Boston read lines from cue cards with the passion of a man who really believed he was breaking news. “In Bryant Park, the trends don’t stop on the catwalks. Behind the scenes, the stage is being set for the hottest hair and makeup of the spring season!”

“This is the biannual rite and ritual of how the fashion industry does its business,” Ms. Mallis said. “This is how you get the information out in 20 minutes to the widest, biggest audience in the world. And it helps the retailers decide what they’re going to buy, the editors decide what they’re going to feature, the agencies decide what they’re going to advertise.

“And then,” she said, “there’s the priceless publicity.”

Priceless? Katy Rodriguez, co-founder of the Resurrection Stores, was flying back to L.A. on Monday, totally over it. “It’s not for lack of talent that young designers aren’t really doing anything new,” she said. “It’s because they don’t have a moment to develop their ideas. The market doesn’t allow them to.”

Half an hour later, the Hilton sisters sashayed into the tent on each other’s arms, a Jungian archetype of a frat-boy’s wet dream. Their hair was blonder than blond, their shorts shorter than short, Paris’ engagement ring so big it looked fake.

Just as one might have been tempted to commit hari-kari right there in the center of the photographer clusterfuck, a hilarious little dumpling of a man wearing a red bandana tied shmatte-style around his forehead started shouting, “That’s hot! That’s hot! That’s hot!”—over and over and over.

This man was named Richard Spiegel, who works as a fashion photographer and editor for Lucire, which just last week featured Nicky Hilton on its cover. His breath smelled like coffee and nicotine.

Wasn’t Carolina Herrera boring? “I think Carolina—she has her clientele, and smart designers cater to their clientele,” he said. “You want to keep them happy, because if you don’t do that, all the society girls panic, and they decide they have to call up Oscar or Zang Toi. Certain designers fill a need for the society girls. And it’s very critical—because you can’t go to the ball if you don’t have anything to wear.”

The press is just plain wimpy, it was suggested. “I read Women’s Wear today, and it seemed like they liked everything they saw,” Mr. Spiegel said. “There’s a lot of politics in fashion, with magazines and so forth. Advertising dollars play a big part in this industry. And therein lies the rub. Say there’s a designer spending $75 million on advertising, and it’s not the greatest collection; the [media] are going to turn around and say it’s great because of the advertising dollars.

“It’s the truth,” he said. “If you don’t have the advertising, you don’t have a magazine, and magazines go in and out of business, left, right and center.”

Late Monday night at the Marc Jacobs show, Irene Chung, the mastermind behind the Marc Jacobs accessories line, explained Mr. Jacobs’ absolutely visually boring but socially spectacular show. “He was thinking of Heathers and Carrie and schoolgirls gone crazy,” she said. The artist Hope Atherton, who has been designing costumes for the Narnia movie, said, “He really re-created a specific sliver of Americana. It was very cohesive.” Sure … it cohered.

When Mr. Jacobs himself arrived at his own after-party, he promptly opened the doors to the uninvited milling masses in front. “Come in,” he offered. Later, his muse, Lil’ Kim, performed. “I heard she’s being taken to jail right after this performance,” said Lydia Hearst-Shaw, a professional muse herself. Cannonballs shot silver confetti onto the dancing masses. Lindsay Lohan, having changed into a blue potato sack, asked incredulously, “Isn’t there another exit?”

By Choire Sicha, Jessica Joffe, Lizzy Ratner, Raegan Johnson, Nicole Pesce and Brad Tytel.

While there are dozens of hairdressers-a few in Manhattan-who donate their services to the organization, Lucy went to Frédéric Fekkai, which doesn't. Her choice of hairdresser wasn't necessarily the brattish, name-brand, label-loving desire of an adolescent who has read one too many issues of Teen Vogue. It was my wife Debbie's idea.

Debbie goes to Laurie Green, a hairdresser who recently joined Fekkai after having her own Upper West Side salon for many years. If Lucy was going to disfigure herself, Debbie thought, she could at least have it done by a trusted professional.

Debbie couldn't bear to watch, so she sent me instead-a reversal of the customary sex roles. "Usually, it's the fathers who are upset," explained Susan Stone, Locks of Love's executive director. "They don't recognize their little girl."

I confess to having felt a bit of trepidation. Lucy had long, straight blond hair, and cutting it off-no matter how worthy the charity-seemed a self-destructive act. On the other hand, as one who lived for years under the yoke of a mother whose control over my own hair was nothing short of fascistic (until I put my foot down in my late teens and forbade her to accompany me to the barber), I knew that hair isn't something worth risking your relationship with your children over.

Not that I entirely subscribe to the notion that "It's just hair-it'll grow back," as Lucy claimed when she lobbied for the make-over. Mine didn't: By the time I was allowed to grow my hair the way I wanted (and took full advantage of my freedom by sporting an Afro), it had already started to recede. So to me, hair evokes feelings of urgency, as well as anxiety and insecurity.

On the other hand, when you've lost as much of it over the years as I have and you realize there's not a damn thing you can do about it (real men don't wear hairpieces or get plugs), you tend to become philosophical.

Of course, if you're going to make an event of the ritual slaughter, there's no better place to go than Frédéric Fekkai. It bears no resemblance to Michael's Barbershop on the Upper East Side, where my mother used to take me, and where the comic books had licked and discarded lollipops stuck to them.

Michael's shelves weren't stocked with a signature line of men's and women's hair products; nor did it have a café serving "Les Sandwiches." I successfully resisted the temptation to order lunch while Lucy changed into one of the salon's chic white robes.

Laurie told us that Anna Quindlen, the novelist and former New York Times columnist, had recently been in with her own daughter, who'd also had her hair shorn for Locks of Love. "She had curly hair down to her butt; she had grown it for a long time," Laurie said. "It's kind of a trend for these young girls. Someone came in to do a demo from Paris; the model also wanted to donate her hair to Locks of Love."

According to Ms. Stone, the Locks of Love executive director, the organization gets between 2,000 and 3,000 donations a week, some from as far away as Nepal. "Lisa Ling donated her hair on The View," she said. "And Ann Curry and her daughter are growing their hair for us."

It takes from six to 10 ponytails to make one hairpiece, with long, straight blond or red hair being the most desirable. Unfortunately, the majority of the hair that Locks of Love receives is discarded because it's damaged, dyed, gray or too short.

"Ninety percent of the hair we use comes from children," said Ms. Stone. "It's what we call 'virgin hair.'"

In the end, it all happened so fast that I confess I was looking the other way when Lucy's 13 inches became hairpiece fodder. One moment they were on her head-the tresses I'd known since she was small, that had graced a hundred home videos, a thousand snapshots, over a decade's worth of Christmas cards-and the next instant they were gone, severed by Laurie in one confident, unsentimental snip.

The hairdresser placed the shorn hair on the counter before us. To me, it looked like a dead-if golden-animal. Road kill. "It's better you didn't bring Debbie," Laurie acknowledged. "She'd be having tears in her eyes right now."

Lucy, on the other hand, was ecstatic. Not so much because of her altered appearance-her hair was still wet and stringy-as by the boldness of the gesture.

"I'm so touched that so many kids are willing to give up a part of their identity so another child can reclaim theirs," Ms. Stone had said to me. But in Lucy's case, I don't think it was so much about giving up her identity as asserting it. I've never seen her look as giddy as she did while Laurie fashioned her remaining hair into what she described as a contemporary bob. In a matter of moments, she went from being a kid to an ingénue.

"I'm so happy you didn't bring her," Lucy said, referring to her mother, as she admired herself in the mirror. "This is so much better than what I had in mind."

And shorter-her hair hardly reached her jaw line. "Blame it on me," said Laurie, whose relationship with my wife-who has something of a complex about her own hair-has had its ups and downs. "She's been mad at me before. It won't be the first time.

"Tell Debbie I'm going on vacation," she added, perhaps rethinking her bravado. "Tell her I left this evening."

But Debbie's reaction was less violent than I'd anticipated-though my mother did not take the news well. She'd always wanted children with straight blond hair-her spawn all had curly brown or black hair-and I had to hold the phone away from my ear as she questioned our parenting skills.

Lucy sent her hair away to Locks of Love after letting it dry for several days ("If it's wet, it's going to mold," Ms. Stone had cautioned). Frédéric Fekkai gave us the haircut for free, and loaded us down with beauty products, after learning the righteousness of our cause–and that I was writing about the whole experience.

Unfortunately, Lucy's offering doesn't qualify as a tax deduction. I checked. "The donation of a ponytail is equivalent to donating a body part," explained Amy Weeks, Locks of Love's project-development coordinator. "And donating a kidney is not a tax deduction, according to the I.R.S."

Anna Wintour, the queen of the New York City fashion hive, named her daughter Bee-and thus far, the buzz around the Teen Vogue contributing editor and unofficial muse, 16, is almost uniformly positive. Few were willing to discuss the offspring of the most powerful woman in the haute -rag trade on the record, but some words bandied about included "delightful," "well-adjusted," "well-mannered," "good breeding" and "natural intelligence."

"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree," said über -publicist Paul Wilmot, a family friend who's known Bee and brother Charlie, 18, since they were small. "But she's got the DNA and, by osmosis, she's got the exposure and experience."

Maybe it's because Mom is a strong career woman, and because Dad-Ms. Wintour's ex-husband Dr. David Shaffer-is a shrink, but the kid seems to be turning out all right. "She's very poised and elegant, and carries herself very well," said a fashion journalist huddled under the cozy cloak of anonymity. "She's regal." Apparently the icy demeanor so feared in the Condé Nast elevators melts behind the doors of the family's Sullivan Street townhouse. "People who know Anna-even those who say she can be cold in business dealings-remark that she's a surprisingly good mother who is very warm with the kids," another industry observer said. "The father is great, too. They have two very good parents and they don't seem overspoiled."

Just call her the anti-Hilton sister: You're not going to find young Ms. Shaffer cavorting unchaperoned on tabletops at Bungalow 8 or marching down some random designer's runway in slut couture. "Anna is very much about having her children with her when it's appropriate," Mr. Wilmot said. "Bee will go to a show occasionally or make an appearance at a cocktail party with her mother, but everything is very normal."

Ms. Shaffer attended her first fashion show at age 2, and these days can often be spotted in the front row beside maman (and in front of Teen Vogue editor Amy Astley), clad in an age-appropriate jeans-and-T-shirt ensemble, perhaps, or a red polka-dotted dress revealing discreet décolletage, her dark, shiny hair long and parted in the middle or swept back in a smooth ponytail. "Very sleek," said the fashion journalist. "She's very appropriate and stylish. She doesn't dress like Britney Spears; she dresses like an elegant 16-year-old."

Model- cum -artist Ahn Duong painted the comely Ms. Shaffer's portrait and it hung for a time in the Dolce and Gabbana boutique on Madison Avenue. Ms. Shaffer "has these perfect dreamy eyes," Ms. Duong said. "It's a very powerful stare but also very removed and aloof. It's a face that draws you towards her and at the same time keeps you at a distance." She also said the young woman is "very much into sports."

When Teen Vogue launched last spring, there were the inevitable snickers and raised eyebrows about Bee's masthead placement, but they evaporated pretty quickly. "Good old-fashioned nepotism-nothing like it! And why not? Murdoch did it!" Mr. Wilmot said. "When it comes down to it, all these young people will have to stand on their own, and my money's on Bee Shaffer. She's Anna and Amy's secret weapon." Ms. Astley passed up the chance to comment on Ms. Shaffer's job performance this time around, but told The Observer last February: "I really love what Bee has to say." To Seventh on Sixth's newsletter, The Daily , she portrayed Ms. Shaffer as a humble worker Bee: "Working in [the] closet, packing clothes, unpacking-she'll even fetch coffee if someone needs it."

Ms. Wintour likewise refused to comment on her daughter or provide her for an interview-which, frankly, lends Ms. Shaffer a certain distinction in a city full of celebrity offspring angling for the cameras. "Maybe someone would be hoping for an incendiary, but that's just not Bee," the fashion journalist said. "Bee's totally squeaky-clean," said another industry observer. "She's not tacky. She's not like these Ally Hilfiger girls … she's just not like them."

"Where she goes from here-who knows?" Mr. Wilmot said. "Don't be surprised if she ends up in journalism school, and don't be surprised if she ends up a young editor somewhere."

Until then, let Bee be.

-Noelle Hancock

The hazel-eyed, blond-haired ballerina turned editor in chief has such confidence in the girls who read and appear in Teen Vogue that she speaks of being young as though it were synonymous with being talented.

"They're so young. Soon young," she said. "Having grown up in the hothouse of ballet, I understand. It's all about rejection, and I try and give them a lot of support where they can feel good and bring that through in the magazine. I want girls to feel happy and confident and good. It's the only way they can grow up and be productive."

Without a pause, Ms. Astley-who was wearing an all-Marina outfit, including a pink llama top-continued: "Another thing I learned in ballet: It's a harsh world."

At 36, Ms. Astley is the next generation of Condo Nat matron: the knockout, stylish urban mother who tends to her children before beginning her real day as mother to thousands of girls who will, like her, care about the news from the fall shows in Milan one day, but for now should be into their own "personal style"-if not French-kissing the lacrosse player next-door.

In June 2002, Condo Nat chairman SDI. Newhouse and Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour pulled Ms. Astley, then nine months pregnant with her second child, to lead the company's charge into the Gilmore Girls set.

In retrospect, Ms. Wintour-whose 16-year-old daughter Bee Shaffer is listed as a contributor on the Teen Vogue masthead and has been cited as the inspiration for the magazine-said she'd become "very aware that there was a huge segment of young women who weren't being tapped into, who were much more sophisticated and interested in fashion and aware of fashion and buying fashion, who other magazines weren't addressing."

Accepting this younger generation into Vogue 's tutelage, Ms. Wintour found the governess par excellence in Ms. Astley.

"I saw how well she ran her department," Ms. Wintour said of Ms. Astley. "How she seemed to take on so much beyond the normal job description. She seemed to have the right understanding of young women."

Now, close to a half-million teen girls are picking up fashion tips cribbed (but not directly taken) from the runways and the streets of the outer boroughs of New York. In the first three issues, the magazine has averaged newsstand sales of 374,900, with the last two selling close to 400,000. In February, the magazine will increase both its rate base (to 500,000) and its frequency, from six to 10 times a year. While the old guard of teen magazines either falls (see Teen ) or seeks new footing, Teen Vogue has become the mini-sized tote-bag survival tool for what Ms. Astley describes as the "fashion-conscious girl."

Calling upon her own Michigan childhood spent yearning for something else somewhere else, Ms. Astley has become the girlish archetype of success: she believed in herself, wanted the best and, well, got it. The husband. The two kids. The glamorous editor-in-chief title at Condé Nast.

Not that you'll find any advice on how to land that future husband in Teen Vogue . Like its grown-up predecessor, Teen Vogue steers a hemisphere away from sex advice, kissing tips and embarrassing moments.

What's left is fashion and beauty, with an underlying sensibility that allows for "other girls" to do the things they would probably regret. Someday, Teen Vogue oh-so-softly whispers to its young readers, you'll rule the world.

"The makeup is very appropriate for the age," said Aerin Lauder, vice president of advertising for Estée Lauder. "The fashion is appropriate; it's not overly sexy. She respects teenagers and their sense of trends, but she also respects their parents as well."

Ms. Astley-who wasn't allowed to watch Happy Days as a child because, um, it featured dating and, you know, the Fonz-said that she wanted the magazine to encourage strong relationships between parents and their children.

"It's parents who help kids understand what's appropriate and what's not and give them their values," Ms. Astley said. "That's where you get it. Our responsibility is to show them an image of life that has glamour and has elegance, but has quality. We have standards that we try and uphold in the magazine. So I feel confident they're having a wholesome experience with information and education."

Indeed, if there's one great surprise in Teen Vogue , it's how damn democratic the magazine can be. Sitting behind her white marble desk on Friday, Sept. 26, Ms. Astley (who currently lives in West Chelsea and is moving to Tribeca) pulled out a recent feature from the October/November issue and declared, "Every cool kid in New York lives in Brooklyn! What's the point in spending half of your salary on living in Manhattan? All my staff lives in Brooklyn. We just found great girls who live in Brooklyn on Brooklyn streets. We didn't dress these kids. And it's really important to me that the magazine is racially, ethnically diverse, fashion-wise diverse. We don't say someone is or isn't Teen Vogue . I think all girls expressing their personality are right for us. You know, you have the preppy girl here and the girls with their lip liner and their Puma bags. It's a little bit of everything. Of course we show them the looks of the season and the things they should think about buying, but I also try to emphasize to them that you're great the way you are."

That means, Ms. Astley said, scouring addresses that aren't named Rodeo and Park-or even Smith, for that matter. In some respects, Ms. Astley sees herself as a scouting director, seeking that one fashionable girl wandering the pedestrian mall in Richmond, Ind.

"It's very time-consuming to scout, and my staff loves Teen Vogue ," Ms. Astley said. "We love it. We live it. We go up to girls on the street. We've all done it. Everywhere. Anywhere. Obviously, it's easier for us to scout New York and L.A. because we have staffs. It's harder to scout girls in Ohio. But there are great girls in Ohio! There are great girls everywhere. It's a priority for me. It has to be racially diverse, ethnically diverse-girls in different shapes and sizes, different kinds of looks. You know, we're not just the Prada princess. Definitely not."

In her almost blindingly white corner office on the ninth floor of the Condé Nast building, with an enlarged photograph by Irving Penn behind her desk and a stack of adult Vogue magazines on the windowsill, it's clear that Ms. Astley believes in her mission as den mother for the fashion-obsessed. She wakes up at around 5 to 5:30 a.m. each morning and is in the gym by 6. Both she and her 25-person staff (Lilliputian by Condé Nast standards, where six aspiring novelists often run the fax machine) are in by 9:30 a.m. and will often work until 9 at night.

Speaking to his wife's devotion to the product, Chris Astley-himself a photographer and artist whom Ms. Astley met the summer after her freshman year at Michigan State, when the two sat next to each other at a showing of Ferris Bueller's Day Off in East Lansing-said, "She's feminine and soft on one hand; on the other, she's incredibly rigorous. She never stops thinking about her job. Almost everything she looks at, she puts through the lens of her job. For better or worse."

Tiny dancer!

If Ms. Astley can speak to that girl in the Midwest without adopting fashion's sometimes condescending drawl, it's because she was once one of them. The daughter of a painting professor at Michigan State, Ms. Astley first came to live in the city when she was 11, after her dad received a Rockefeller grant and moved the family-including Ms. Astley's mother and two brothers-from East Lansing to Tribeca for a year. Tribeca was "still rough in the 70's, when I was living there," she said. "So rough. And now I'm about to move there with my kids, and I think, 'This is insane! This is like yuppie land!' It's unbelievable-unbelievable to me. I'm moving there now so my kids can go to P.S. 234, the great school in Tribeca. And when I lived here, we had to get bussed to the worst school you could ever go to in your life, that had metal detectors. This is a part of me-I mean, I worked at Vogue for 10 years, but I have experiences that give me a different view on kids and helps me as an editor."

Most of that experience was colored by ballet, from which, Ms. Astley said, she picked up a sense of line and proportion, but perhaps something more important: an understanding of the perfection, the absolute perfection, demanded in both the corridors of fashion magazines and from the front rows of the shows of Paris, Milan and New York. Indeed, while Ms. Astley preaches a kind of "It's O.K. to be you and me" ethos in her magazine's pages, it's infused with the idea that self-boosterism-demanding the absolute best from yourself-is what's needed in this world.

"It's going from one rarefied world to another," Ms. Astley said. "The ballet world is really rigorous. It has no mercy, and I think it's true of fashion at the top, too. And beautiful-really beautiful. When you're a dancer, they teach you that you have to smile while you're performing and make it look easy. And everyone has to look and think it's easy. But it's really painful. It's years of work and it's rigorous, and you're sweating and your feet are bleeding. And to me, everything beautiful-everything worthwhile-requires that."

At 18, Ms. Astley quit dancing, quit bleeding from her feet and quit cementing a smile on her face onstage. She decided that if she couldn't be the best, couldn't go on to the New York City Ballet, she didn't want to dance anymore. She didn't want to spend the next 10 years in regional theater companies, watched by people who'd gone to school on one of the coasts but were now resigned to a life of semi-decent Thai food and tenure-track jobs.

So, instead, at the last minute-at a time when all of her ballet friends were off to apprenticeships with companies and her faculty brat-packers were leaving for New Haven or Cambridge or even Ann Arbor-Ms. Astley got into Michigan State "by the skin of her teeth." She met her future husband (himself from East Lansing and a student at the University of Michigan), studied English and, by her senior year, was ready to return to New York for good.

"She liked fashion," Mr. Astley said. "She never talked about it or anything, but she always looked pretty good to me. But she was interested with style, lifestyle, people who led interesting lives and talked about interesting things. She kind of hates things being mundane."

After graduating from college in 1989, Ms. Astley came straight to New York and to Condé Nast, because, she said, "I wanted to be at the best company and knew this was the place for me."

Beginning as an assistant at the now-defunct HG , Ms. Astley rose through the ranks, writing and editing till the day the magazine closed in 1993.

That day, she got the call from human resources. Anna Wintour wanted to see her. Today.

"I was like, 'Today? I'm not dressed!'" Ms. Astley recalled. "And they were like, 'Today is today. Right now. She's ready.' And that was my introduction to Vogue and how Anna works."

Ms. Wintour brought her into the haute mothership, under legendary beauty director Shirley Lord; she would eventually take that title herself. Certainly, Ms. Astley has a very un–Lauren Weisberger view of both Ms. Wintour and the magazine she commands. She said she speaks to Ms. Wintour "every day" and that working with her was "amazing," "incredible" and "inspiring."

"She's at the top of her game," Ms. Astley continued. "She has real energy. She never takes her eye off the magazine, and I learned from her that the book is only as good as you are. You're the engine pulling it. You have to keep pushing people. Get the right team. You have to inspire people to do their best. Everyone inspires in a different way. I am very nurturing. She has a different style, and it worked for me. To me, it's a place only for the best, which is harsh but true. And I was totally comfortable with that.

"I only want to be around people who are really ambitious, with the highest standards, putting out the best work," Ms. Astley said.

Sensing that, Ms. Wintour approached her in 1999 with the idea of overseeing a test run of Teen Vogue .

With no staff of her own, Ms. Astley cobbled together work from freelancers and the younger staffers of Vogue to produce four test issues from fall 2000 to fall 2002 while she continued her duties as beauty director at Vogue . On June 4, 2002, just days from giving birth to her second daughter, Ms. Astley said that Ms. Wintour called her in and told her that Mr. Newhouse was serious about officially launching the title. The next day, her birthday, it became official. After a June 14 C-section and a maternity leave, Ms. Astley spent the rest of the summer assembling her staff.

While Teen Vogue draws upon the lights of established photographers like Mario Testino, teacher and protégée see the magazine as a minor league to develop young models, stylists, writers and photographers (as well as new readers) for its adult counterpart. Asked about the difference between the two, Ms. Wintour noted that Ms. Astley uses "a lot less expensive clothing from the kinds of places not appropriate for Vogue . She uses a wonderful mix of clothing and does cover houses the reader is looking for. There's a very personal style for the teen. It's very individual. It's not right off the runway; it's much more about a young girl taking things and putting them together on her own."

But they're not on their own! They have Ms. Astley.

"People are always saying to me, 'Don't you miss Vogue ?' And I'm like, 'No, now I work with all the fresh talent.' I love Vogue , obviously, but this has a whole different premise than Vogue . It's still about style, but it's celebrating everybody who's young and new.

"I want another baby, but I can't," Ms. Astley said. "Because Teen Vogue 's my third baby. And I don't think I can take care of four babies."

Insidethe U.N.'s East 46th Streethome, there was a flurry of media activity. Reporters from Di Zeit to the Daily News to The Christian Science Monitor tried to quickly crib the names of Security Council members. Producers complained about the space given to their cameramen. Outside in the cold, TV crews trained their lenses on howling protesters.

The reason for all the commotion, of course, was that Hans Blix-the U.N.'s elegant, even-toned chief weapons inspector, who appears to have stepped out of a John Le Carré thriller-was delivering his report on Iraq's dealings with the arms inspectors. Though Mr. Blix kinda-sorta split the difference in his report-telling the Security Council that while Iraq had complied with U.N. inspectors, it hadn't come to "genuine acceptance" of the organization's terms, prompting the Bush administration to continue its prep for war-it felt, for the first time in a long time, that the U.N, for one brief moment, was again the center of the earth's attention.

For the media, it was a long time coming. Since the seminal debates of the Cold War, the U.N. had slowly devolved from a rollicking showcase of power fisticuffs into a dusty symbol of 20th-century bureaucracy and ideals. Even when the U.N. was actually doing something-sending peacekeepers into Bosnia, initiating the first Gulf War against Iraq-it felt predictable and pat, like dinner theater.

But now the stakes were big again, and so was the story. For Mr. Blix's remarks in the open meeting of the Security Council, the U.N. issued about 600 credentials. Afterward, dozens of journalists thronged outside the second-floor meeting room where Mr. Blix met with security members in private. When they emerged, they spoke in front of a sheath that had been temporarily hung over a tapestry version of Picasso's Guernica . Derek Rose, a reporter for the News , hunted for what he called "color. Good color."

At least on this day, there was plenty of color to be found. "It's a good story that puts us U.N. reporters in the center of the storm," said Benny Avni, who covers the U.N. for Israel Radio. "And on page 1."

Indeed, reporters assigned to the U.N. felt vital-even if some of them wondered whether their audiences understood what was actually happening.

"The most complicated thing about this story is the references to technical stuff," said Washington Post U.N. correspondent Colum Lynch. "If you haven't followed this story before or studied the basic documents, it's extremely difficult. Most Americans think there's a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. You wonder if people are actually reading the newspapers. We [ The Post ] probably explored this topic as much as anyone else … and what you find in the reporting is a good deal of skepticism about the linkage. And yet, it doesn't filter through to people that there's not an established link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, between Iraq and Sept. 11."

Maggie Farley of the Los Angeles Times shared some of Mr. Lynch's frustrations. She described following the Iraq story on the U.N. beat as "part comparative literature and part paralegal work, like knowing the difference between an 'and' and an 'or.'

"I've written a story almost every day about this issue since September," Ms. Farley said. "It's to a point where I almost can't write about it anymore. If people don't understand it, I don't know what else to do.

"The trouble is, this is a nuanced issue," Ms. Farley continued. "And you have an administration that prefers to deal with black and white. This has a lot of shades of gray."

Of course, Mr. Blix's report also played big internationally, but that's not unusual. Unlike the U.S.-where the U.N. only seems to show up in the news when there's a war on, or a diplomat with $500 in unpaid parking tickets-people abroad care about the U.N.: They believe in the organization and take an interest in what it should do.

"It's the biggest story right now, especially because there seems to be a battle between the French and the U.S.," said Philippe Bolopion, a reporter with Radio France Internationale. "People in France feel really strongly about Iraq. There's a definite pro-Iraq bias in France. I'm very surprised to see the coverage here. Every day, the front page is: 'Bush says time is running out.' There's very little questioning about what proof the administration has that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq has ties to Al Qaeda."

Gianna Pontecorboli, who's covered the United Nations for over two decades for a group of regional newspapers in Italy, assessed the difference this way: "What happens is that people are blinded by their own ideology. We Italian journalists have done very careful reporting, but when you go to Italy, people ask you, 'Does Bush really want a war?' And I say, 'Yeah! That's what I've been saying all these months!'"

Ms. Pontecorboli called Jan. 27 "historic."

"Look at the attention," she said. "The attention of the media. The attention of everybody. Everyone was very careful with what they said. I was here in '91. It was different. That was carefully orchestrated by the U.S. You knew where things were going to lead. Here, you don't know."

And now for a Freaky Friday alert ….

On Thursday, Jan. 24, and Friday, Jan. 25, the supposedly liberal New York Times had op-ed pieces by Bush National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as Leon Kass, the ultraconservative bio-ethicist, and the granddaddy of them all, William F. Buckley Jr.

A little further downtown, Democratic Senators John Breaux and Zell Miller and their fellow party member, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, penned op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal , whose editorial page usually reads like one big, gushy love letter to Barry Goldwater.

"I woke up today and saw Buckley and Kass in The Times and thought, 'Can this really be The New York Times ? These are our guys!'" said Tunku Varadarajan, editorial-features editor for The Journal . "Then I saw the unsigned editorial on 'The Right to Counsel,' about Jose Padilla, claiming a Sixth Amendment right to counsel for military combatants, and I realized that I was in Rainesville after all."

When asked if he and Mr. Varadarajan had in fact switched personalities, New York Times Op-Ed page editor David Shipley said: "I'll believe it when they start running Noam Chomsky. My goal for the page is to post as many different voices and opinions as we can."

Apparently, that includes football coaches. On Sunday, Jan. 26, Bill Belichick-last year's winning Super Bowl coach-wrote a humorous piece with "thirty-seven thoughts" for the winning coach of this year's big game.

"We called him, and he was willing to play along," Mr. Shipley explained. "[ Sports Illustrated ] and other news reports always cite him as the smartest coach around. This usually works out one out of every hundred times, and this time we got lucky. He did it all himself, and it came in camera-ready."

Asked if he planned to further comb the N.F.L. coaching ranks for pundits (Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells on U.S. aggression, perhaps?), Mr. Shipley said: "When the occasion demands it, we will."

They can't move 'em out fast enough at the business section of the New York Post .

Following the dismissal of media business reporter Dan Cox last year, the Post recently fired Wall Street and markets reporter Jessica Sommar.

When reached by Off the Record, Ms. Sommar confirmed that the Post let her go on Jan. 6 for, officially, "not breaking enough stories."

Citing a confidentiality agreement, Ms. Sommar declined to go into details about her dismissal, but said: "If this were about breaking news, this would never have happened. But I absolutely love the Post . I think it's the best daily newspaper in New York."

Post business editor Jon Elsen likewise declined to go into the matter, but told Off the Record: "Jessica's left, and we wish her well."

Do they call her Mini-Me? Condé Nast–watchers may have noticed that the masthead of the newly launched Teen Vogue includes Bee Shaffer, who is the teenage daughter of none other than Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue for adults.

Teen Vogue editor in chief Amy Astley indicated that Ms. Shaffer is a natural.

"She's been involved since the very first issue," Ms. Astley said. "I really love what Bee has to say. She's obviously the ideal Teen Vogue reader. She and her friends are a ready-made focus group. They're smart and really sophisticated and clearly know a lot about fashion, but they're still normal girls."

Ms. Shaffer is not the only Condé Nast kid on the Teen Vogue staff. There's also Cayli Cavaco, the twentysomething daughter of Allure creative director Paul Cavaco.

"Paul is a friend of mine, so I understood what Cayli's interests are," Teen Vogue 's new editor in chief said. "She's very crafty. She likes do-it-yourself projects, so we're having her do one of those each month.

Your exaltation is, however, tinged with Schadenfreude . Despite the weight loss, you still think of yourself as fat, and you are justifiably terrified of backsliding. You need a new look–and, more importantly, a role model with whom to identify: a prominent kick-ass sister who emerged from a cocoon of cellulite and took the world by storm.

Fergie's too hearty, Monica has hardly made a splash ( did she ever shed the pounds?), and Ricki and Oprah were more fun when they were heavy. How about Carnie? Since her August 1999 intestinal bypass– which was, as you doubtless recall, broadcast live on the Internet–Carnie Wilson has lost 150 pounds. She has a good sense of humor; in the Nov. 6 issue of Us Weekly , she confessed to attending church only so that she could munch the wafer. But maybe her personal style is just a little too Brentwood for you. Wait! I've got it! The very person–and she, or rather what's left of her, is coming to New York. I'm talking about Maria Callas!

Maria, like you and Carnie, went through a dramatic weight loss. In 1953, the stout and gifted Greek song stylist lost 60 pounds–and bingo! Her subsequent image and style metamorphosis into La Divina was possibly the greatest makeover of all time. Carnie, whose aspirations, according to Us Weekly , extend to posing nude for Playboy , would do well to check out the 200 items from the upcoming Calmels-Chambre-Cohen auction of Callas' estate in Paris (Dec. 2 and 3), which will be on view in New York from Nov. 11-13 at the Ukrainian Institute at 2 East 79th Street. As should you–or at least study the catalog ($70).

The catalog is a blow-by-blow account–a veritable training manual–of how the grooviest-looking opera singer in history got her shit together. Lingerie, gloves, court shoes, brown suede Bruno Magli boots (knee and ankle), a gabardine trench from Yves Saint Laurent, white kid gloves from Hermès, plus the ultra-chic clothes created for Maria by beturbaned Milanese couturier Elvira Biki. The 417 lots in the catalog (including a Pyrex measuring cup) are interspersed with spellbinding and useful pics of Maria. Yes, she had the cash to buy some good stuff–but shekels were not the key to her look.

The Maria Callas guide to self-reinvention:

1. Keep it simple–with the exception of a few embroidered djellabas, Maria's wardrobe and accessories had country-club restraint (unlike her makeup).

2. Figure out a bold signature maquillage and never deviate. In Maria's case, it was the two jet-black tadpoles of eye-liner. (F.Y.I., this season the culty makeup line Poole introduces a makeup kit called Icon–inspired by Callas. It's $55 at Bergdorf's.) This exaggerated look was cleverly juxtaposed with conservative clothing.

3. Haughtiness. Walk around looking like you just smelled something foul. You're a one-woman show–Maria never sang supporting roles. As a chubster, you may have mistakenly felt the need to be nice to everyone. Act like a cat: Allow others to win your affections.

P.S. Develop a skill. You may not ascend to the artistic heights of La Divina, but you must be able to do something .

Stop smoking–just stop it! And it's not that hard. People have made it harder for you by trying to be "supportive": friends and well-wishers now offer "encouragement," instead of telling you how revolting you are. I think it was so much easier to give up smoking when non-smokers were allowed to be vociferously judgmental.

I gave up in 1977, thanks to a group of braying friends who, every time I lit up, would subject me to a tsunami of negative feedback. If you are having trouble quitting, surround yourself with anti-smoking fanatics (whose opinions you value and whose personal style you admire–i.e., not your family) and commission them to berate you.

You might also want to refer to Christy Turlington's oddly compelling account of her nicotine odyssey in the new fall 2000 Teen Vogue ($3). Christy's effectively written piece made me want to give up all over again. It's nice to know a model can string two words together. By the time you get to the moving tale of her groovy Corvette-driving Dad, a PanAm pilot, and his battle with lung cancer, I guarantee you will have hurled your Salems down the john.

While we're on the subject of Teen Vogue : Where, may I ask, are fashion-conscious teens supposed to get the money to buy all this designer drag? I thought teenagers stitched their own clothes or bought stuff in thrift shops. Teen Vogue should be careful–in Japan (as reported in The Guardian ), label-crazed middle-class teenagers are now funding their fashion purchases by turning tricks.

Are you experiencing grotesque and irrational cravings for a life in suburbia? Are you having secret fantasies of trading in your over-stimulating urban existence for a happy little world of barbecues, patio hot-tubs and rec rooms? If you've started to imagine yourself snuggled up in an A-frame ski-lodge tucking into a cheese fondue, or making a gorgeous little Noguchi-esque rock garden, you may well need to start a collection of Sunset books.

These magazine-sized booklets originally retailed for $1.95 and can now often be found at yard sales, thrift shops and eBay, sometimes for less. Building a Sunset library will allow you to give full reign to your proclivities, safely and vicariously. My favorites: Walks, Walls & Patio Floors , Carports and Garages , and How to Build Decks for Outdoor Living .

You've got a pokey little bedroom and you've made the hideous mistake of setting it up like a formal chambre à coucher , i.e., classic bed placement–shoved up against the wall–with adjacent bedside table and lamp. That little dressing table. Ugh! Throw it all out–buy a good-looking bed and stick it in the middle of the room . The room is now empty–and your bed is in the middle.

You need a sculptural mod-looking bed with a sturdy and erect headboard so that you can read or strike seductive attitudes should the need arise. Where to buy it? You're never going to find a mid-century bed at the flea market. They don't exist. Christine Miele, co-owner of ReGeneration (38 Renwick Street, 741-2102), has designed the bed that you need. This angle-steel construction comes in a choice of finishes (prices start at $2,800).

Sticking it in the middle of the room will render the room, the bed itself and possibly even you more important.