We have one in the works right now. We can’t say where it is, but there will be another one opening this year. Everything about [the Bowery store] is my baby, and it’s very credible — between the concerts we do there and the way the store is merchandised and the whole history that’s there — so as we take it to other places, we want to make sure the credibility factor [is there]. We have to do something really unique when we go to Los Angeles or Austin.

One of the important things was to not just put in a white box. Even though the majority is white, we were going for a cleanness and modern simplicity while still being able to tell that you are in New York and in SoHo because of the cast iron we preserved in the space. We didn’t just want to do a branded store, where if we also open a store in Paris and L.A. that they would all look the same. Of course we want it to have a Derek Lam signature to it, but it becomes boring when the stores look all the same — like duty-free.

After splitting with her husband, Mohammed (Eddie) Kamali, in the mid-1970s, she took to camping in the woods with a boyfriend. “It was cold,” she recalled, “and I was always getting up at night to go to the bathroom.” On one particularly nippy night, she threw on her sleeping bag and sprinted for the bush. “As I was running,” she said, “I was thinking, ‘I need to put sleeves in this thing.’ ” The rest is rag-trade history. Variations of that seminal Kamali design have inspired generations of puffy down coats. An emblem of urban survivalist chic, the original spiked in popularity after 9/11. “When it really looked like slim pickings for selling anything, we were making sleeping-bag coats out of every piece of fabric we had,” Ms. Kamali recalled. “That coat is what kept us in business.”

Ultimately, in this attractive-looking exhibition, you don’t learn enough about the modeling experience as it played out in the late 20th century really to care... By the time you reach the last rooms of “The Model as Muse,” in the ’80s and ’90s, you might as well be flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine, so random and arbitrary are the conclusions...What goes unaddressed is the change from film to digital photography, and how that affected sittings and the dynamics of the photographer-model relationship. It’s the sort of elemental question the curators should have asked. Instead they seem guilty of the grossest fashion sin: wanting to hang out with the models.

The good news is in this crazy, terrible economy, I think people’s taste is getting better. They have to think about what they buy and they’re getting a more discerning eye because of it. There are no more shoes you can’t walk in, bags you can’t carry, dresses you can’t sit in...I equate [the current climate] to late-Seventies New York. I was young, excited and I had no idea that I was moving to New York just as the city was on the verge of bankruptcy. Crime was at its worst. The world was ending. But it was actually a very creative moment for New York. Creative people — whether it’s fashion, film, music, art — are going to have to try a little harder. We’re going to see this strange combination of creativity and pragmatism. That’s good news.

I feel very flattered, honored and proud to be associated with anything to do with this beautiful museum, this wonderful institution that I grew up with being a New Yorker, and very grateful have been asked to participate, for me, I mean, this is a dream come true.

When I was a little kid I was like a female impersonator. I used to do Judy Garland impersonations, and Marlene Dietrich impersonations, Streisand impersonations. It was crazy. And I used to have this following in the community where I grew up, in Brooklyn. And I was this little freak. People used to stop me on the street, the same way they do now - "Oh, I love you, I think it's so funny that you can actually sound exactly like Dionne Warwick." This was before my voice changed, right? And it was always, "Oh, you're fabulous," but then, "Ha-ha, what a freak." That's what it was. And it feels the same now. Whenever anyone on the street says, "Oh, you're so great, I love your work," it always feels like they're with a gang of kids down the block, calling me a freak. It's this weird dynamic that has always existed in my life. So when people say, "Oh, you're this personality," that's what I've always been and always will be.

Many designers seem to be running into difficulty over how to approach women this Fall... dividing their collections schizophrenically between sober-sided sellers and artistic gestures of the sort they hope magazine editors will put on their pages. Dries Van Noten has no such conflicts: He doesn't have to cast about for a "realistic" attitude because that, and never made-for-editorial fireworks, is what his business is based on.

Leave it to Alexander McQueen to create a powerful visual message about the planet’s perils by rearranging the continents, via photo manipulation, into the shape of a skull.

I found a two-dollar flannel shirt on St Mark's Place and I sent it off to Italy and had it made into a $300-a-yard plaid silk. It was like the Elsa Perretti crystal tumbler at Tiffany that was inspired by a paper Dixie Cup. I love to take things that are everyday and comforting and make them into the most luxurious things in the world.