Harper's Harpies Take Fashion Week

GEM DANDY Van Cleef & Arpels show (Photo: Getty Images)

Congrats to Harper's Bazaar EIC Glenda Bailey! The style stampede that is New York Fashion Week has barely begun and her junior editrixes have been declared the meanest girls on the scene.

At last evening's celebration for the Euro-jeweler Van Cleef and Arpels, it would have been easy to mistake the fashion world as quite harmless—tipsy, perhaps, but fangless. The event at Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom, which featured a hot pink carpet, a candy-pink poodle, was a gauzy celebration of all things Parisian. Models trod the runway in frothy French evening wear, and there were Lido dancers with tassled nipples. But amidst the champagne, diamonds, and, er ... Sarah Michelle Gellar, the fashion gossip was simmering.

According to one high-ranking fashion publicist, in the run-up to the busy fall season and a month of runway shows in New York, Milan, and Paris, the Bazaar girls have taken glossy bitchery to new heights. "In our office we call it 'B-List Syndrome' said the source, who declared that one of the mag's mastheaders in particular had been quite aggressive in her attempts to cadge free loot.

Anna Wintour's Vogue-ettes, by contrast, "have really been shockingly sweet," says the PR princess. Needless to say, Anna, we're quite disappointed. Thankfully, you've got six more days to whip your girls into shape.