Niki Cheng and Shaokao Cheng at their Chelsea BoConcept store. (PMc)

The first time The Observer met Niki and Shaokao Cheng, it was July, during the opening night of Julio Gaggia’s art show. Mr. Gaggia, the boyfriend of the plastic surgeon Mark Warfel, was preparing his work “Living Art: Chelsea Boy Apartment,” during which he would live for five days as a window display model at the BoConcept furniture store on West 18th Street. He spent the week eating, sleeping, working—and performing other, less-mentionable activities—in a showroom that divided him from gawkers outside with a pane of glass.

While we lounged about on the display furniture, socialite photographer Patrick McMullan brought over a petite woman with short, pixie-cropped hair.

“Niki is one of the few Power Asians in New York society,” he loudly whispered, flourishing Ms. Cheng before us. She smiled shyly and posed for a photograph before excusing herself.

It would be two weeks before we realized that Ms. Cheng and her husband owned the store where we had dropped more than one canapé between the cushions of a $3,000 couch.

In fact, the couple owns all five locations of the Danish furniture store in New York City, and another two in New Jersey. But the stores themselves aren’t the reason Mr. McMullan calls the Chengs “Power Asians.” Rather, it’s the couple’s seemingly innate social instincts, their ability to leverage a fairly cookie-cutter, mid-market design base into a celebrity-filled social whirl. One might say “Only in America,” or (even worse) “Only in New York,” but this wouldn’t exactly cover it. There is a certain type that thrives in Manhattan no matter what they’re selling, no matter where they’re from, no matter how few resources they have upon arriving.

If Darwin were alive today and researching the survival of New York species, he would do well to study the Chengs. They’re not social climbers, per se, but social movers—Gladwellian “connectors” who know everyone from celebrities to the guys with the best drapes in the city. They share their knowledge strategically with other key additions to their ever-expanding Rolodex. For Niki Cheng, 39, and Shaokao Cheng, 41, life is not about climbing a ladder. It’s about traversing the monkey bars that crisscross Manhattan.

“Niki and Shaokao have a wonderfully progressive view of New York society,” said Village Voice scribe Michael Musto. “They mix into their social circle drag performers, club holdouts, top celebrities and the corporate crowd. It’s all-inclusive.”

Last Friday, we met Ms. Cheng for a second time—again at the Chelsea store. While we were there, actress Faye Dunaway came in and had what one could only call a fit of method acting for a sequel to Mommie Dearest. The recently evicted Academy Award winner had come in two weeks ago and bought a piece of art from the store, and now she wanted Ms. Cheng’s help on a new design project.

“I adore this store. I’ve raved about it; they really need to get some of this stuff to London,” Ms. Dunaway told The Observer. “They don’t have anything like it there now.”

Unable to find a confidentiality agreement for us to sign, she stormed out shortly thereafter. (We didn’t get to tell her that there are actually 13 BoConcept stores in the U.K.) It was the kind of scene that no one wants a reporter to witness while writing a profile, but if there was any bad blood, Ms. Cheng didn’t show it.

“Really, don’t be upset,” she told The Observer, rubbing our arm soothingly. “She’ll call back. Anyway, where were we?”

The Chengs are adept at pleasing their celebrity clients, a skill that has come in handy while designing P. Diddy’s home, Jay-Z’s office (bed included), Mary J. Blige’s entire apartment and Estelle’s closet. Susan Sarandon, Lil’ Kim and Patti LaBelle have also used the duo’s interior design services, and Ms. LaBelle sang at the BoConcept flagship store for a Lance Armstrong benefit. They count designers Vivienne Tam, Asher Levine and Zang Toi among their closest friends.

Not that everyone in their circle is a brand name. After Ms. Dunaway left, we rushed over to Astor Place, where BoConcept was sponsoring a tent for a Christmas tree stand run by a Brit named Marco Romero, his girlfriend and his brother. Though he runs a jewelry shop in Greece most of the year, Mr. Romero spends three weeks in December living out of a van selling holiday firs, and Ms. Cheng took it upon herself to decorate the tent that the trio takes shifts in.

Despite a franchise that traffics mainly in large-scale items, Ms. Cheng has a burgeoning obsession with “micro-units”—apartments that are between 250 and 300 square feet.

She wanted to prove that it was possible to use BoConcept furniture to decorate a very small space, and the Romeros provided her with an interesting challenge. Their tent was about seven feet long and seven wide, and the guys had to hunch over even when standing at its tallest point. Empty, the space seemed minuscule. But after Ms. Cheng put down an orange rug, a short shelving unit, an ottoman, a table and two chairs (as well as several well-placed decorative objects), the tent looked like a living room on the Lower East Side.

It’s never quite clear why Ms. Cheng decided to treat Romero and his tent like VIPs, but when it was revealed that a $3,000 lamp from the store broke on the ride over, Ms. Cheng gasped, then turned to Mr. Romero. “We’ll have to get you another one.”

Shaokao Cheng, Cienna Cheng and Niki Cheng. (Patrick McMullan)

Perhaps the random act of kindness was a viral marketing ploy, or stemmed from her own back story of struggle. (Probably a bit of both, if we’re being honest.) Niki Cheng—née Chong—was 25 when she moved to New York in the mid-’90s. She had an architecture degree from the University of Malaysia and a visa that was only good for one year. She was scraping by as a coat-check girl at Von when she met Mr. Cheng, a young banker whose father had given him a $90,000 loan to buy a single-bedroom apartment on Madison and 32nd.

The two were introduced by a restaurant co-worker of hers, and she began relocating her belongings to his apartment after the first date, she said. After a heady three months of dating, Mr. Cheng invited her to move into his place permanently. “He didn’t realize I already had,” she laughed.

But there was a catch: his apartment in Murray Hill would be undergoing extensive renovations for two years. They made a pact: if they could live through the 24 months without breaking up, they would become a pair in the business sense as well. Mr. Cheng also pushed his girlfriend to get a job at a furniture retail outlet that would give her a three-year visa.

One day while working there, Ms. Cheng came upon a catalog that featured a coffee table identical to the type she sold. Except that Ms. Cheng’s outlet was selling her model for $2,000, and this unheard of Danish brand was selling its at $299.

The brand was called BoConcept, and its international franchise operation was just getting off the ground. The Chengs approached the company with the idea of opening a New York store on Madison Avenue, but were turned down. BoConcept’s owners thought that space in the city was too expensive and there wouldn’t be enough room to show the big items. In their view, New Yorkers were not the target market for their oversized aesthetic.

But the duo were undeterred. “We had spent a year putting together research that proved that this store could be opened in New York,” Ms. Cheng said. They also showed their plans to a friend they met at Bungalow 8.

Their friend turned out to be designer Max Azria, who spent 10 minutes calculating the figures the couple had acquired during their research, sketched a number down on his pad, and told them to go for it.

In 2003, BoConcept agreed to let the couple try their hand at a New York flagship for $300,000. “We had everything to lose,” Ms. Cheng said. “They had nothing to lose.” Niki was 28 and Shaokao 30. They had recently gotten married in Hawaii after three years of dating because, as Mr. Cheng put it, “My wife went to three different psychics who told her that marriage would bring us good fortune.” Mr. Cheng and his father remortgaged their houses to pay for the initial investment.

They barely survived the first two years; they couldn’t figure out the computer systems, and there were issues with shipping. Their business model might not have actually worked had Mr. and Ms. Cheng not been so socially ambitious.

With his degree in engineering and hers in architecture, they were able to use their conjoined home-decorating skills for seemingly un-BoConcept-related purposes. When one big-name celebrity client called, nothing from BoConcept would fit in their closet, so Ms. Cheng happily suggested shelves and fixtures that did. Soon, the singer was calling the couple to redesign her living room, and this time they used items from their Dutch catalog.

The fact that BoConcept’s furniture design is somewhere between IKEA and West Elm is somewhat beside the point. What the Chengs have done was take a relatively bland furniture store from a not especially popular Danish franchise and parlay it into a personal calling card.

When the two aren’t peddling 12-piece sectionals, they can often be found at yoga or otherwise getting fit. At 12:54 a.m. Saturday morning, The Observer received a text from Niki, who asked if we wanted to attend a 10 a.m. Bikram session with her. (We pleaded out.)

Later that morning, Ms. Cheng was at the Madison store, dressed from head to toe in brown Juicy velour. She helped hunk real estate agent Ryan Serhant from Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing find items for his move from Pine Street to Chelsea ... which of course will be documented on Bravo’s website. After he left, Ms. Cheng rushed out herself for a private second yoga session of the day, but not before inviting The Observer over for a home-cooked meal the next night with “some friends” that included Ms. Tam and Mr. Musto.
http://youtu.be/JjI2SwrGnHs
A 2010 BoConcept commerical featuring Mr. Musto and Ms. Cheng.

In 2006, the Chengs moved with their baby daughter Cienna from Murray Hill to a $1.7 million, 2,200-square-foot artist’s loft with 12-foot-high ceilings on Fifth Avenue at 29th Street. This is the space, apparently, where you can keep two six-foot ottomans without it feeling cluttered.

Cienna is now 6, their son Eden 3; when we arrived Sunday evening, their mom was running around the gigantic apartment, scooping them up for bed. Ms. Cheng looked ready to fall asleep herself, after making a feast: home-cooked dishes with pork belly, chicken, eggplant and fish, and a lotus soup for dessert. Ms. Tam was there, and Mr. Musto showed up for dessert. Mr. Levine wasn’t able to make it, but the table was more than full.

Mr. Cheng explained that she had rescheduled her meeting with Ms. Dunaway, but was too busy cooking to make it down to the store. So she had the actress come up to her apartment and multitasked.
As we were leaving, Mr. Cheng asked sincerely if we would come back and have dinner when we weren’t on the job. Ms. Cheng had already invited us to their Christmas party and a luxury garage sale they were co-sponsoring this week. They were so nice! How could we decline when they were so generous?

Another rung added to the monkey bars.

"I'm a fellow Malaysian, so I have to come and support the event," explained the compact, genial designer Zang Toi, accompanied by a model in a floor-length cape adorned with glittering cut-outs of the New York skyline (a look from his spring collection, he explained).

He's still working on making his designs eco-friendly. "Not yet, I'm ashamed to admit it, but soon. They were trying to get me to do it last year, but I was traveling so, so much..."

In the meantime: "I try to walk as much as I can. I almost never take a car unless I have to, like tonight's cold... Even on the weekends if I'm not in a hurry I walk! I was having dinner with two friends at Indochine all the way downtown by Astor Place, I walked all the way down to dinner, it took me about an hour to walk all the way home to the Upper East Side. I think I did my part."

Blonde stylist and socialite Kate Schelter was chatting with Aimee Mullins, the model, actress and double amputee, who was resplendent in a pale blue Yigal Azrouel gown. "I recycle, I wash my hair about once a week, which I think saves electricity and shampoo," said Ms. Schelter, of her own personal eco-initiatives.

The women agreed that living in New York tends to make one eco-conscious. "Let's say this, there's not rooms in my apartment that I'm not in where the electricity could be on," said Ms. Schelter. Ms. Mullins, meanwhile, had gotten her entire East Village apartment building to start recycling.

Later, Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini explained what he does for the earth. "The only thing I really do for a living besides working at the Four Seasons and running this place, I raise... I make honey. I have hives, I live up in Westchester, and that's what we basically do. We make quite a bit of honey in the summertime. Last year we were selling at Dean & Deluca. This year, because I only make like 180 bottles, 180 liters-which is still a lot of honey-I sell it mostly at the Four Seasons. And people love it. Everybody's constantly asking me for more."

He produced a plastic container labeled "Bee Naughty" honey, illustrated with a cartoon rendering of himself. 

"In the Grill Room we are sold out every day," he continued, disputing suggestions that the economy had put a damper on power-lunching. "In the Pool Room it's much less so, but at the same time we have introduced a $59 menu, because this year is the Four Seasons' 50th anniversary." (They couldn't do a $1,959 menu, he clarified).

Charlie Rose, the evening's emcee, breezed by. "Two meals today," he said to Mr. Niccolini, holding up two fingers.

"Lunch and dinner's enough today!" echoed Mr. Niccolini with a laugh.

"This is a nice event," Mr. Niccolini concluded, surveying the room. "Lots of attractive people."

“Hello, You have received a personal invitation from your friend (zangtoi13) to join them at Gayguyschat.com,” the message began. Mr. Toi insisted that he had never heard of the site before the first blast was sent on Jan. 8, as reported elsewhere. (After which he followed up with an e-mail asking his pals and associates to “please please please DISREGARDS it!”)

“[The responsible party] probably have my entire address book in there,” Mr. Toi told the Transom over the phone. “They are so stupid—they send it to all the women. What’s wrong with these people?” He laughed. “I was in bed for 15 hours yesterday. I got up and of course I got all these e-mails from all my friends.”

Mr. Toi shrugged off the first incident, but by this point? “It’s annoying,” he said. “After a while, it’s not even funny anymore.” He added that a few gay friends of his were looking for him on the site, which features homoerotic videos, photos and stories. “And I said, ‘I bet you wish you could find me in there!’”

Irritating digital hiccups aside, Mr. Toi has been enjoying the afterglow of his successful show. On Sunday, he said, a group of Saudi Arabian princesses—“a new group of princess I have never worked with before”—spent the day at his studio, where they bought up the entire collection. “And then I went to the gym,” he said.

Last week, Zang Toi—a New York-based fashion designer beloved by the likes of Ivana Trump, Sharon Stone, Eva Longoria and Patti LaBelle—apparently had his e-mail account breached by a nasty prankster. The Daily News reported the following day that the counterfeit message (which The Daily Transom also received), held an invitation to join Mr. Toi on Gayguyschat.com.

Today, Mr. Toi, who is openly gay, spoke to us about the hoax.

“One of my girlfriends sent me back an e-mail right away saying, ‘Your e-mail has been hacked!’ She sent me the e-mail and a couple more of my good friends called up, and we all had a great laugh about that!” he said.

After asking his company’s tech-support manager to change all of his computer passwords, Mr. Toi decided he should follow the first e-mail with some kind of explanation.

“Hi everyone ... someone hacked into my computer, and my computer guy is looking into the matter. If you do receive this mail ... please please please DISREGARD it!” he wrote.

The designer is now back to work, fine-tuning 15 pieces from his fall 2008 line for his Feb. 8 runway show. The look is "Old Adirondacks," he said, but “a very sophisticated and glamorous version.”

This was a barefooted affair, intended to raise awareness for Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Challenge charity bike race in October, in which Mr. Toi is competing for the second year. The host served his special chicken curry and sautéed shrimp with string beans. “I cook and I clean the pots as I go along,” he said. But “tonight, there’s so much going on.” Deep calming breaths!

Before dinner, a few attendees poked gingerly around Mr. Toi’s impeccable closet, which has a white side and a black side; any colored items are kept at the designer’s office.

And during the feast Mr. Toi slipped back into his bedroom and moved a silver vase on his mantel an inch or so. “Yes,” he said. “I hate the messy.”

“I want to be New York’s answer to Rachel Zoe,” said stylist Kristian Laliberte, referring to the Los Angeles–based queen bee of celebrity stylists. Mr. Laliberte, 23, was chewing over his career ambitions, along with a steak frites, after a busy Saturday spent pulling outfits for clients at several showrooms around town. He was due at the Sue Stemp show at the Soho Grand in 40 minutes.

“Yeah, Nicole Richie did fire her and called her a bitch,” he said of Ms. Zoe, a walking advertisement for the much-maligned skinny look, “but you know she worked her way up to that. She’s one of my idols.”

In his mind, this seemed to be the answer to a riddle he’d been trying to solve since the Yigal Azrouël ---show the day before: Am I a professional or a socialite? Can I be both?

Mr. Laliberte and his pretty, petite partner Bridget Helene have styled One Tree Hill’s Sophia Bush, Veronica Mars star Kristin Bell and, most recently, the Duchess of York. Since May, he’s also racked up 80 appearances on patrickmcmullan.com. “It’s hard, because going out and being photographed can overshadow, and in the case of certain people, it has hurt their career,” he said. “But I think that it’s good to network. Once you find a career you need to advance in, you tone that down.”

Mr. Laliberte was wearing too-tight John Varvatos jeans (a gift from All American Rejects front man Tyson Ritter), a deeply V-necked gray Prada sweater, a button-down shirt (some of his rust-tinged face powder had smudged onto the collar), a red vintage skinny tie and—apparently—a number of hats. This week, he and Ms. Helene have been shepherding a 16-year-old client, All My Children star Leven Rambin, to various shows, in various outfits of their choosing. They also assisted with the publicity, seating and so-called celebrity-wrangling at the Yigal show on Feb. 2; Mr. Laliberte, though he said he plans to style indefinitely, is currently interviewing for various fashion P.R. positions. He has also been writing fashion blogs for out.com and a new models-only social network, modelshotel.com.

But the Internet hasn’t been entirely welcoming to Mr. Laliberte. “Bridget Helene and Kristian Laliberte look like two little clowns running around New York,” read a post attributed to someone named “Posh” in the comments section of Socialiterank.com. “There is nothing special about them and they always look like they are trying too hard.” Added another commenter, “Snapoo”: “Kristian Laliberte is a social climbing loser. Bridget is too. Sorry. Disgusting!”

“It’s like: What? Like, who are these people? Do people really go home at night and write this shit?” Mr. Laliberte fumed. “One night I was so fed up, I wrote in and was like: ‘You guys don’t know who I am.’ I was like: ‘Um, I work my ass off. I’ve never made any pretensions of wanting to be a socialite, nor have I ever claimed that I was one, so I don’t know why you’re saying I’m a wannabe, because I’m pretty comfortable doing what I’m doing. And all I want to be is, I want to find the career I want to do, and I’ve been working towards that goal.’”

For the record, the Yigal show went off without a hitch, and everyone was very pleased with Mr. Laliberte’s wrangling, which brought in such coveted gadabouts as Fabiola Beracasa, Olivia Palermo and Annelise Peterson. “The front row was a socialite’s wet dream,” Mr. Laliberte exulted.

“This was one of his first shows, and he obviously did a great job,” said the socialite Derek Blasberg of Mr. Laliberte. “There were a lot of great people here. He’s got some pull.”

Mr. Laliberte isn’t exactly a Horatio Alger story. He grew up on Nahant, an exclusive little island off Massachusetts. His father is the famous contemporary painter Norman Laliberte. His mother, Laurel, is a designer and a philanthropist. The yard in front of their 14,000-square-foot house was landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. Mr. Laliberte said he never had to hide his sexuality from his parents growing up, and he remained out while attending Milton Prep and Columbia, where he graduated in 2005 with a degree in European history.

In December of that year, he and a female friend were walking out of a gay bar in Lynn, Mass., when a man yelled “Faggot!”, threw Mr. Laliberte against a car and beat him unconscious. He spent a month in the hospital and had seven operations to restore sight to his eye. “At first I was petrified to leave the house, and then the panic attacks started in three months after,” he recalled. “But it gave me a huge perspective and also that much more drive.”

The incident also made Mr. Laliberte realize that he’d “always been hiding a little bit and never really confronted my homosexuality. And in the end, it made me give less of a shit about whatever other people felt about me in whatever capacity …. You realize who your real friends are—and what you need in life to make you feel good.”

Clothes are one of the main things that make Mr. Laliberte feel good. He spent most of last year working as a buyer, stylist, publicist and creative director of Caravan, a high-end boutique in Nolita. “Basically, my boss, Claudine Gumbel, couldn’t deal with the fact that me and Bridget would go out every night and network and like promote the brand,” he said. “She would send us pictures off Patrick McMullan and be like, ‘What were you doing?’” He said Ms. Gumbel made him cry nearly every day. He resigned in December.

“You know you have other people working here too, and Kristian has a bite about him sometimes, so maybe I made him cry, but he definitely made other people feel shitty too,” Ms. Gumbel said on the phone. “My frustration was that he’s going out so much that he can’t come to work on time. Kristian had days where he worked very hard, and then he had days where he didn’t show up when we really needed him.

“I think he needs to figure out if he wants to be famous or do a good job for someone else,” she added, “or bring those two interests together.”

On Monday, Feb. 5, Mr. Laliberte was synthesizing his interests quite deftly. He and Ms. Helene had hired a car to squire around Ms. Rambin, and the trio went to five shows, each of which required a wardrobe change.

Sitting front-row at Luca Luca, the blond, broad-shouldered, leggy Ms. Rambin said the day had been a great success thus far. She loved the outfit Mr. Laliberte had picked out for her, a gold-python trench over a mocha dress. “It’s something I would have picked out myself,” she said.

“We got swarmed by like 40 paparazzi outside,” boasted Mr. Laliberte, who was wearing Prada shoes with tassels, another pair of too-tight jeans, a button-down shirt, a blazer, and a vintage camel-hair overcoat with a coyote-fur tippet. “Did she tell you she made WWD on Friday?”

Mr. Laliberte might have his detractors, but Ms. Rambin, for one, proclaimed herself delighted with his services. “Kristian is an amazing, creative, inspired, crazy, insane, psychopathic, fun-loving, beautiful, dedicated, loyal, proud person,” she said. “He’s a publicist, he’s a friend, he’s a stylist, he’s your dad, he’s your brother …. He’s like everything in one.”

Annelise This

“Calvin wa s no longer a fit for me,” said Annelise Peterson in spotless professional-speak, after the Yigal Azrouël show at Bumble and Bumble on Feb. 2. She recently quit her job as head of communications at Calvin Klein, citing “family consequences.” Now she is working on “special projects,” that catchphrase of the new millennium.

“I want to be creative,” said the towering blonde, by which she did not mean experimenting with different shades of eyeliner. And by “special projects,” she was not talking about challenging Rachel Roy and Tinsley Mortimer’s reign atop socialiterank.com. (Ms. Peterson currently occupies the 14th position, nestled snugly between dueling celebrity daughters Bee Shaffer and Victoria Traina.)

“I’m about having a career and using my mental and creative capacity, not running around at parties,” Ms. Peterson further told The Transom, adding that she had majored in economics at Columbia. “I don’t really have a dream job, so long as I feel like I’m using my mind and feel creatively fulfilled,” she said.

She was wearing a Yigal dress and a vintage fur. “I’m just going to three or four shows. It’s really great to see what young designers are doing. It’s great to see outside the Calvin box, and that’s why I enjoy the shows. Last year, I didn’t even go to any shows, I was so busy.

“I will always work in fashion,” Ms. Peterson said. “But what I do within it is ‘mum’s the word.’”

—S.M.

Into His Cups

The legendary Malaysian-Chinese designer Zang Toi took a break from fitting his models in sexy samurai-style garments on Feb. 3 to discuss his second passion: Chinese porcelain.

“Yeah, I really do love china,” Mr. Toi said. “I recently had all this beautiful handmade china by Harrods, all this china made for me in white and platinum to go with my apartment.” He was sitting behind an enormous desk in his showroom on West 57th Street, gazing at the March issue of Elle Decor, which was flipped open to a spread featuring his new place on the Upper East Side.

“It’s beautiful,” he continued, of the china. “Has lots of the cherubic, like the rosebuds and roses. But the traditional way they sell it is with multiple colors, so I had mine just white with a little bit of these platinum leaves. So it’s very clean, but it’s very opulent—but it’s very minimal at the same time.”

Mr. Toi is animated and rosy-cheeked, with shoulder-length black hair, an all-black wardrobe and a lazy left eye. He is a motor mouth to begin with, but the subject of his 23-year obsession with china brings the cadence of his speech up to lightning speed. “I started at the flea market at Sixth Avenue,” he said. “Nobody would go to the flea market, but I would religiously go to the flea market every Sunday for so many years, until all the fashion people go and I stopped going.”

Relationships were strained. “I remember I saw this set of white and gold Limoges that I was collecting that was being sold somewhere in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Toi said. “My poor ex-boyfriend, I made him rent a car, we drove in the thunderstorm on a Sunday. He must’ve drove six hours to get me there to buy my china. Meanwhile, I was sleeping the whole time in the car,” he added with a giggle.

Move over, Limoges: What Mr. Toi really wanted to discuss was his new set from Harrods. “I bought everything in six,” he said. “I have cute big terrine and two smaller ones. And two big square rectangular platters, and then a beautiful square cake plate with handles. I like things that are special, and that one, I use it as a salad plate. And a round one with handle that’s my dinner plate. And I have a beautiful—they call it a biscuit jar, it’s a beautiful bowl with a cover and three legs, and I’m using it as my soup bowl or my noodle-soup bowl.”

—S.M.

Wes’ Dyspepsia

At the Vionnet relaunch at Barneys on Friday, Feb. 2, jewelry-designer-cum-Wes-Anderson-muse Waris Ahluwalia was going through a sort of decompression period. He had just returned from spending more than a month on a train in India shooting Mr. Anderson’s new film, The Darjeeling Limited.

“Food was always the main topic,” he said. The majority of the film takes place on a train. Mr. Ahluwalia plays the conductor. “Everyone was always like, ‘What are you going to eat? What are you going to eat? What’s for lunch? What’s for dinner? I don’t want to eat dal. I don’t want to eat dal! I’ve been eating dal for four weeks!’ It was always an issue. We hired a new chef; I tried to make him make plain vegetables.” He shook his trademark black turban gravely.

There were emergency shipments of food: crackers, biscuits, cookies, chocolate. One night, Mr. Ahluwalia’s girlfriend, Chiara Clemente, cooked pasta for the crew.

”Another source aboard the Darjeeling line mentioned a factor likely compounding the mass stomach ailment: the opium treats munched by much of the cast and crew on weekends. “They were in these bars, mixed with sugar to make it taste sweeter,” this person said. “It’s kind of like pot, really mellow.”

But, the source agreed, “the food was really awful. The worst catered Indian food no one wanted to eat.”

—S.M.

Mr. Mohair

At the Luca Luca show on Feb. 5, The Transom caught up with one of Fashion Week’s greatest mysteries, Patrick McDonald. You know, the guy with the eyebrows?

Mr. McDonald, 49, was bravely dressed all in fall 2006 Yves Saint Laurent. “I’ve got a purple mohair coat, a purple knit sweater, mustard-yellow corduroy pants and purple shoes,” he said.

“Oh, God, I’ve been doing a lot of things,” he said. “I just interviewed Michael Vollbracht from Bill Blass for Mao Mag. I’m working on a project with my friend Nancy Bacich; it’s called Eve Kitten. She’s Gotham’s lingerie superhero.”

A friend recently started a MySpace page to keep track of all the press that Mr. McDonald gets for, among other things, wearing funny hats. “I do go on it here and there,” he said, adding that he personally catalogs all his Bill Cunningham clippings from The New York Times, “because I just adore Bill.”

Mr. McDonald lives in a shoe, doesn’t he?

“I live in a shoe,” he said, nodding. “I live in a closet. But I love my crazy closet, with my 350 hats and my 300 pairs of shoes—I love it.”

Mr. McDonald’s been part of the Fashion Week circus for over two decades. So is anything different this year? “My hair’s a little longer,” he said. “And I’ve decided to extend my eyebrows further. It’s my trademark, so as Stephen Knoll, the hairdresser, says to me, ‘We’re connecting the dots.’ Soon they’re going to go into my hairline, connect down my sideburn and into my beauty mark, so it’s going to be connect the dots. You know—why not?”

—S.M.

Ball-ywood

Early last week, a nude photo of Mischa Barton’s boyfriend, Cisco Adler, front man of Whitestarr, swiftly made the rounds on the Web. It was notable for Mr. Adler’s pirate-like leer and the rather elephantine aspect of his, er, family jewels.

“Ballgate,” Mr. Adler called it, reached by phone at his Malibu residence. “Everyone’s been really supportive.” He laughed a little. “No, I mean—shit, I think it’s pretty rock ’n’ roll. You know, if it was like yesterday I would’ve freaked out, but then I looked at the picture and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s from like 2001. Whatever.’”

How’d it happen?

“Paris’ shit got stolen, and somehow she had a picture of me naked in there,” he said with a sly snigger. “That’s Paris Hilton to you!”

The photograph would have hardly caused a blip were it not for the aspiring rock star’s extraordinary genitalia. But Mr. Adler didn’t care to discuss this topic other than to say: “I just went to Chicago, and I felt like every older woman at the airport had seen my balls—which was weird.”

He continued: “I’m a naked dude! I don’t give a fuck.”

But Mischa? What about her feelings?

“Mischa wasn’t too excited, to say the least,” said Mr. Adler, who has a “rock ’n’ roll reality show” premiering July 5. “I think it was actually worse for her than for me in some ways. So yeah, I’m gonna try to keep my pants on from now on.”

—S.M.