Have you seen Glenn Close as a ruthless litigator in perfect power suits on “Damages”? Alber Elbaz has, and the television series helped inspire a new tailoring capsule collection he’s launching for pre-spring chez Lanvin.

When Proenza Schouler introduced round sunglasses in spring 2008, the designers were actually so far ahead of the trend that they were at a disadvantage. Circular frames are not face-friendly, Ms. McCabe said, and usually look best on women with strong jaw lines, so the line’s initial styles were difficult to sell. But newer versions, which are slightly larger and more angular, with the stems positioned higher on the frame, have been a success. Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the designers of the label, said in an e-mail message that they had been bored with the prevailing Wayfarer look and that, while looking at images of midcentury factory workers in goggles, “something about the simplicity of that shape against the face turned us on.”

It all seems suspiciously cyclical. The same accusations were lobbed at my generation of New York transplants, who, in the ’90s, were also accused of ruining the city and raising rents. Except we were called “20-somethings,” and we didn’t look half as put-together. Hipsters, conversely, look adorable in their unkempt-but-still-dressy duds. In fact, it seems as if every guy I know under 28 dresses really well. Recently I visited a store in South Williamsburg called Yoko Devereaux, where young hipster men find clothing to adorn themselves. The moment I walked in and saw the fresh, lovely styles available, I realized that they want the same things we do: love, attention, cheap cocktails and a nice-fitting shirt.

Ms Kawakubo, 66, is one of the great fashion forces from the last decades of the 20th century to now. Integral to her success is that she is too original to be pigeonholed — although others may see her as a symbol of feminism, judging her by the chic severity of an unvarnished face under a straight fringe, complex but plain clothes and flat shoes.

I mean only that it took radio roughly 40 years to reach 50 million people, while it took the Internet just 4 years to reach the same number of people. This is the dynamic that fashion must embrace in the coming years in order to be truly creative and relevant. It’s great to talk about “slow fashion” and the value of handcraft in informing our imagination. These qualities will still be important, as Paris is, but imagine the other system of thought that revolts and finally breaks free of the old world.

A number of combatants were college-age women in flat sandals and black toenails, usually deployed in ruthless teams of two or three. Some were Asian with Pucci newsboy caps; some arrived with identically dressed mothers. Husbands were few. Most know better than to get caught in this frenzy. I did catch one luckless wretch, wholly abandoned, sitting in the middle of a blast zone of discards. In a daze, he fingered a strappy orange Givenchy platform lying next to him, tipped it over to squint at the price, then shook his head in existential bewilderment, as if this, finally, was the cracking point of his spirit.

Sitting on the hood of the astronauts’ pickup truck, unidentified, is Vuitton’s $1,530 “Icare” travel bag named for Icarus, the hero of Greek mythology who dies when he flies too close to the sun. Is that a little weird? [Antoine] Arnault says when he saw the bag, he thought “what a nice symbol and coincidence! We are representing these people who went closer to the sun than anybody.”

The appeal of Acne Paper is the unfettered blend of the new and the nostalgic, except it doesn’t feel like nostalgia in this context. Maybe it just feels free.

Three of Newhouse’s editors, past and present, took the stage to praise Leibovitz, the diva of divas, the kind of exotic, cantankerous talent that could only exist in Si’s world. Annie shows up at photo shoots with two vans of assistants and equipment, commandeering the scene. During her baroque financial troubles, Newhouse rushed to her aid, making a personal loan said to be seven figures...Onstage, Tina Brown, Anna Wintour, and Graydon Carter lined up, three of the four editors who praise Annie—Jann Wenner is the fourth. The stage was bare, like in a Beckett play, commanding presences waiting awkwardly on spots visibly marked in blue tape—the Oscarish aspirations broke down long ago.

If you compare it with philosophy [fashion] is frivolous. But frivolity may be something good, something that is part of our lives. So I don’t dislike it. And what I like is the mix — that in your life you can have serious things, more frivolous ones. Fashion is about beauty and the search for beauty, I think it’s a fundamental thing. No one criticizes if you want to do beautiful homes. No one criticizes if you want to buy a beautiful chair. But so many intellectuals still criticize why you want to wear beautiful clothes, and it’s only our body, so it must be important in a way.