Trump to meet Graydon Carter? Oh my....

The US President-Elect tells his growing Twitter mob that American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour paid him a visit at his indebted Trump Tower suite in the last few hours, inviting him to meet fellow Conde Nast editors. He said he would graciously do so "this AM". This is a canny move on the part of CN's artistic director who really should now be called Dame Anna. Dame Anna (to repeat myself - do please keep up, Donald) herself backed Hillary and Obama before her - and then there's the problem of Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair editor. His dislike of "short-fingered" Trump is one of the wonders of journalism in its mainstream, imperilled current form. Why, only this morning, my new copy of Vanity Fair arrived in the post, and scarcely a good word may be found in its silky pages on the topic of Trump and his clan. Oh my! Just read Graydon's very rude editor's letter. But perhaps he's being post-ironic, confecting a rage that disguises a love of celebrity and success. And when Trump turns up, Graydon will throw out a welcoming hand in an attempt to latch onto those elusive short fingers, hoping not to crush the titchy digital petals in his mighty manly paw, assuming he doesn't miss them altogether.

Graydon's campaign against Trump did smack of playground big cockism, in its focus on size. In photos, Trump's hands look 'normal' to me and not appreciably smaller in scale to the rest of his over-sized, big-burgery booming self. My suspicion is that Graydon may take the day off when Trump pops in - I mean it would look most odd if the two men were photographed all bromantic after the anti-Trump propaganda unleashed by Carter's pen and commissioning. One has to think about credibility even in these times of post-truth and post-irony and hacked email posts.

I do hope that Graydon is not about to disappoint Madame.

Anna Wintour invites you to dine with her and President Obama

US Vogue editor Anna Wintour - my NEW DARLING - is backing Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race. Madame Arcati predicts his victory - all things being equal. And now Anna invites you - YES YOU - to join her, Jessica Sarah Parker and others (oh and President Obama) at a New York dinner. She advises: 'Just don't be late.'

Anna says: 'I'm so lucky in my work... '

Glenda Bailey OBE: Erstwhile queen of the Marie Claire cocks supplement

Glenda Bailey

New York's other British fashion queen, Glenda Bailey, is keeping docile feature writers busy, I see. The 52 year-old editor of Harper's Bazaar has a book to flog, Harper's Bazaar Greatest Hits (a mere £28.99 from Amazon; or if you prefer, £35.99 from Telegraph Books), and a V&A talk to publicise - September 18. Not to mention 'Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style' which runs until 8 January 2012 at the International Centre of Photography in New York. Book return flights now!

In the Observer today, a grazing fawner avers, 'While running the American version of Marie Claire, [Bailey's] penchant for risk-taking was legendary.' I'm sure it was. But nothing compared to her pioneering antics on British Marie Claire - I wouldn't expect any of the newspaper indentured tots to know anything about that time (the 80s-90s, darling); or even to imagine that sentience was alive and kicking even before their own natal birth.

Who can forget (if one knew to start with) Glenda's notorious penises supplement? When I tell people who doze through Glamour now, they think I'm making it up. But Glenda Bailey OBE, and friend of Karl Lagerfeld, actually persuaded the dull Old Spice scrotes of IPC that what the world needed was the gift of a penises supplement. And there they were, dozens and dozens of different disembodied dicks, a bonanza of Bobbitt-like chopped, cropped choppers, all close-shot - and this before pajazzling. An Argos catalogue of sausages, winkles, cigars, buttons (?) all manner of types; some cut, some not; though all flaccid. This exhibition of cock caused a fuss at the time and sales rocketed.

Glenda's genius was simply this: no mainstream women's glossy editor had ever thought or dared to do this before. Like Warhol and his art. She was copied briefly of course; and then the novelty was done. And later, Glenda got her OBE.

Deservedly so, I'm sure.

Vogue keeps up Asma al-Assad interview as Syria burns

While the Syrian government massacres its revolting peasants, I see that US Vogue has still yet to take down its recent ghastly and fawning interview with Asma al-Assad, Syria's 'dynamic first lady' who is on a 'mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism.' She should import the BBC's resident proselytising atheist Prof Brian Cox to help her out.

'Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East,' writes the unpsychic author Joan Juliet Buck. It is 'a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings.' Joanie makes a big thing of the secularism as if it's some sort of bar to state persecution and murder. I assume she never majored in history.

It seems odd that a magazine so supposedly in touch with the zeitgeist is deaf to Obama's condemnation of Syria. To read the shameful piece click here.

Julie Kavanagh: From Martin Amis' cock to Grace Coddington

Dearest Madame,

Have you read this Aunt Sally of an article on Grace Coddington in the new Intelligent Life by Julie Kavanagh? Evidently the powers-that-be are trusting Ms Kavanagh to write her hybrid interview-memoirs again after her last one about her bed hopping antics with Martin Amis tainted the rarefied airs of The Economist's ivory towers with the smell of bad sex and Martinis before lunch. (I have it on good authority that the powers-that-be hated that article, but also that the syndication requests on it keep rolling into her agent's offices.)

Link to Coddington piece

As one would expect from Ms Kavanagh, the subject of the piece is not so much Grace, who's rather sketchily characterised, but the author herself. She may attempt to present herself as a gauche day tripper in the beau monde of fashion journalism, but the white heat of ambition and social climbing burns between the sentences. I wonder if she's aware of it.

I do hope Mr De Lisle commissions more of these. I derive more pleasure from hating Ms Kavanagh's writing more than I do from reading good journalism.

Ever yours, C x

Dear C

Thank you for drawing this to my attention - I hadn't noticed it and am grateful for your thoughtfulness.

Ms Kavanagh is certainly of a breed I recognise: one with unerring antennae for auric celebrity, even before its formal recognition. It's a genius of sorts and works best when recall is at its sharpest. London journalism would shrivel without these opportunistic sleb-surfers: if they can write, that's mitigation.

Against better judgement I rather enjoyed Kavanagh's Coddington piece, notwithstanding the vulgar opener - 'On a summer night in New York one of the gays in a huddle outside Rawhide on Eighth Avenue calls out, “We love you, Grace!” as she walks home.'

Gays? I guess they were a-screamin' and a-lispin' as gays do.

Many best wishes

Madame Arcati

Dictator's wife Asma al-Assad - thin, as approved by US Vogue's Anna Wintour

Asma al-Assad

A faint sneery rustle of controversy over US Vogue's embarrassingly timed profile of Syria's first lady, Asma al-Assad, 35. As Middle Eastern and north African regimes topple all about its borders and beyond, and Syria itself beats down rioters and restricts internet access, here comes a piece of scented puffery which lauds the wife of President Bashar al-Assad, who won 97% of the vote in the 2000 election.

You can't buy that kind of charisma. Or may be you can.

Apparently, the first lady is the nation's Mother Theresa. Wisely, she leaves the jewels at home while ministering to the dirt poor. She's a strange kind of saintly figure, however. The Vogue piece recounts how she cruelly tells a bunch of children that their school is to be closed down. As infantile blubs start up she reveals she's only joking - 'I just wanted to see how much you care about Massar,' she says of her charity.

It's a very telling anecdote. Living saints should not be overly conscious of the favours they do unto others. Note to the first lady's PRs.

As for Vogue, oh dearie dear. Yet another cock up. Why they ran the interview is revealed in the opening lines. She is 'glamorous, young, and very chic... a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement.' Yes, she is thin: this will have endeared the first lady to editor Anna Wintour who most certainly would not have commissioned the profile had the subject resembled the late Golda Meir or some other aged gargoyle. We all know about Anna's obsession with thin.

If only she had read the astrological Old Moore's Almanack, which from the vantage point of January 2010 foresaw the current revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere, while secular seers had their antennae up their arses. If only.

Read the profile while it's up, here

Madame Arcati's Top 10 Sexiest Posts of 2010!

Kevin Spacey CBE: bio post is No 1

Happy New Year, poppets! 2010 was the year Madame Arcati retired and then resurrected herself. I would love to say that my comeback owed to a public clamour but in fact, as in all things, my own moods played dictator. Blogging in itself serves no useful purpose beyond adding to the online cacophony. The only point to Madame Arcati is I get read.

Now I know you love lists, so here's my top 10 Madame Arcati posts of 2010, with a little commentary.

1. In terms of reader comments, most surprisingly popular post was my piece on the world's first Kevin Spacey (CBE, hon*.) biography, authored by famous Spaceyphile, Robin Tamblyn, click here. If you only read the books pages of our newspapers and literary mags, you'd never know that Hollywood's most secretive actor finally has an unauthorised Boswell. Self-published books always pose a challenge to book editors: who's to tell them if the book's any good? Mostly, these whores of journalism take their cues from their friends in publishing and from publishers' imprints. God knows what they'd make of the Bible were it submitted anonymously for consideration.

2. While bloggers serve no useful purpose in the general sense, they can be useful as trend muscle. So when Madame Arcati joined the online campaign against a plan to appoint Rod Liddle as editor of the Independent, one knew the war was won. Why anyone thought that a right-wing fool could be saviour of a leftish newspaper was beyond comprehension. Did someone forget to eat their spinach? So I was delighted to write the headline: "Rod Liddle won't be editing the Independent". Click here.

3. Sheila Vogel-Coupe - crazy name! This porno star and prostitute, octogenarian granny of an X Factor starlet already almost forgotten, brought tens of thousands of readers to the blog, much to my amazement. I made her my woman of the year. The link should indirectly take you to the site where you can view her engaged in various sex acts, including a copious money-shot. Click here.

4. Saddest exclusive ran on June 17 when I announced the death of Sebastian Horsley. A few journalists thought I'd made it up. A mutual friend tipped me off instead of running to the newspapers. I think Sebastian would have approved. I'm still getting over the photo of him having sex with an amputee - I wonder if I should put it up. Click here.

5. Another surprisingly popular read was my post "Rachel Johnson's A Diary Of The Lady: Masterly at the authorial hand-job". Rachel, editor of the old cunties' weekly The Lady, wrote me a fan letter informing me that Madame Arcati had a page in her book. How expertly she plays the ego. It was only correct that I review the tome, click here. Her book is a Madame Arcati favourite bathroom read along with Albert Speer's memoirs and a bio of Anna Wintour.

6. Most cynical post of the year was "Justin Bieber's penis: a post-modernist approach to blogging". I'd read that the tiny virgin megastar was one of the most searched names on Google so I Arcatised him to draw in a new generation seeking celebrity cock. They will have been disappointed but enlightened of irony, blogging, journalism and celebrity obsession. Click here.

7. "Reward Showbiz™: The 10 most pointless celebrity books and TV shows" proved a lure. So many TV shows and books are created simply to reward celebrity, just ask Joanna Lumley or Michael Palin. So this spawned yet another sleb list. Click here. Sorry.

8. Kate Reardon's appointment as Tatler editor introduced me to the concept of a spinning vagina. I offer this piece as an antidote to churnalism - the writing-up of PR announcements in our newspapers. Click here.

9. Duncan Fallowell gifted me a wonderful anecdote about the fashion designer Valentino; something about his elaborate relationship with the wind. Click here.

10. Permanent fiancee Molly Parkin published her Mollywood memoirs this year, and included in them a sweet, true reminiscence about the two of us. I'm sorry her family don't take us seriously: but that's what families are for, to look out for one. Read my review, Dodging the Conventional Cunts: click here. Do follow the labels on Molly: her interview with me on cocks and spirituality could change your life. In February 2011 all of Moll's erotic novels are reissued by Beautiful Books - they're as freshly witty, sexy and funny as the day they were born.

And on that note, have an austerity-free 2011 under the most miserable and wretched of governments. x

*Shouldn't he have got a knighthood, hon.?

Valentino has an 'elaborate relationship with the wind'

Loved Valentino: The Last Emperor on BBC 4 last night. Must have missed it first time round. Director Matt Tyrnauer got boldly close to the temperamental fashion designer (retired) as he bitched constantly with his stoic partner - business and personal - the handsome Giancarlo Giammetti over runway sets and spare tyres in French, Italian, English.

Of Valentino's exquisitely preserved person at 78, Duncan Fallowell part-credits this to the couturier's 'very elaborate relationship with the wind.' Duncan explains to me: 'When outdoors, and especially on the deck of his yacht, he is always nervously moving about to make sure that any breeze is blowing into his face and not blowing from behind wrecking his hair-do. You think you're having a conversation with him and suddenly he has his back to you because the wind has changed direction.'

Omg! Your chance to breathe Anna Wintour's air!

Oh, hand-fan your face, girlfriend! The legend that is Anna Wintour has created an "opportunity" to meet her at American Vogue on the 12th floor of 4 Times Square, NY. You don't just swan in for ritual humiliation, natch. First, you must make a bid for the chance in an online charity auction - here's the link - and the price to beat as I write is $12,000.

I'm surprised that only 16 bids have been placed; the deadline is April 29 - plenty of time to butter up daddy for the dosh or whatever. Aside from meeting Anna you get to do unpaid intern work at the magazine - y'know, do the coffee runs, push clothes racks and watch Grace Coddington pull faces behind Anna's back. All cash goes to the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, but more important, "Just Being Near Her [Anna] Will Make You Chic," as organisers Charity Buzz put it.

How common.

Is Alexandra Shulman no longer in Vogue at the Daily Mail?

The Prada-wearing Newcastle conwoman who posed as "Vogue editor" or "editor of Vogue" - agency copy needs only a bit of reshaping - gets wide media coverage today. But nowhere does it say which Vogue editor Emma Charlton pretended to be when she fraudulently booked a top British hotel for an £80,000 shindig.

Since it must be assumed the Press Association report failed to specify, the Daily Mail alone has opted for American Vogue, if only as an excuse to put up a pic of its editor Anna Wintour for a sexed up The Devil Wears Prada reference. Commonsense dictates that Charlton would have posed as the British Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman - who is not half as chic as Wintour and has not been depicted in a movie or played by Meryl Streep: she is known to be distressingly normal and pacific in her responses to daily life. Her affable and chirpy boss Nicholas Coleridge can't abide divas. Say "Prada" and you don't automatically think of Shulman. She's not thin, either. Her chipmunky chops are positively squeezable with only the rumour of a hammock-style second chin.

Once upon a time Shulman was a fashion columnist on the Mail until she was dropped in March of last year due to "budget cuts". Her gig was passed to the professional loony Liz Jones who once edited British Marie Claire. All papers are cutting back but I remain unconvinced that money lay at the root of this cut. What could be better than a Vogue editor writing about fashion? Does someone at the Mail think that Alexandra falls slightly below the soignée standards of her US counterpart? The question's not rhetorical.

'Tatlersnob': The man who is utterly obsessed with Nicholas Coleridge

Nicholas Coleridge: In the company of Jordan, Megan Fox, Justin Timberlake et al, he is now a sex object: in this instance, the pin-up of 'Tatlersnob'

Even my most unforgiving critics - yes, you - will readily agree that Madame Arcati has a talent for finding human nuggets: very singular creatures with peculiar tastes. The gorgeous Robin Tamblyn and his preoccupation with Kevin Spacey. Fish and her exquisite fanaticism for Nicky Haslam. Now meet "Tatlersnob".

Tatlersnob, 28, is the alias of a young man who has a fixation on ... Nicholas Coleridge, 52 (job title below), the man who presides over Vogue, Glamour, Tatler etc, in the UK. Recently, Tatlersnob began dropping comments on various Arcati posts in praise of Mr Coleridge: after a while I thought, "I do believe I have spotted another nugget for my Museum of Charming Peculiarities." [I thought these words as a proper sentence]

I am quite confident that Tatlersnob is not a tiresome stalker or clinical loon: he appears to have an incomprehensible obsession with the upper classes (as framed in upmarket glossies, I hasten to add), the aristocracy and Coleridge in particular as icon of the genera. Tatlersnob, after a little persuasion, agreed to a brief, explicatory interview ....

Tatlersnob! Crazy name! Now look, it's become apparent from messages you've left on Arcati that you have a thing for the Managing Director of Condé Nast and novelist, Nicholas Coleridge. Tell me as much as possible what this "thing" is and how it started - do not stint on detail.

I'm a 28 year old male from the wilds of Scotland. I do so love the upper class and the aristocracy. All those ex Eton and ex-Le Rosey types: so attractive and sauve.

You stinted on detail. Anyway, starting with what remains of his hair down to his well shod feet, give us a guide to your thoughts on Nicholas' body parts. I mean, what do you think of his face, his shoulders, tum, other areas, legs etc. And tell us what you think he is like as a person.

Mr Coleridge has such a handsome face. He looks quite sporty and like he enjoys the outdoors. His chest looks quite wide and muscular and he seems to have lovely chest hair. He may well ride and so have very muscular thighs and bottom. AS a good snob I'm sure his crown jewels are well polished and sparkling.

In your dreams what would you love to happen between you and Nicholas, bearing in mind he's a happily married father of four. Share your fantasy - do you have fantasies about him?

I would just like him to take me out to dinner. I'm sure he is a very interesting person. It would be so lovely listening to his lovely voice for a couple of hours.

My own view is that Nicholas is a status obsessed snob as reflected in the magazines he oversees such as UK Vogue, Tatler, GQ etc, and in his rather facile novels which are just about money. How is this healthy? Defend your hero/fantasy lover from my brutal assessment.

I'm sure Mr Coleridge is just going by the old adage "write what you know about". He knows so much about high society and the upper classes, then why shouldn't he write about them? Mr [Geordie] Greig and he made a wonderful team at Tatler and Tatler needs to be somewhat snobby to remain a society magazine.

Christmas is a-coming. What would you love to buy Nicholas and him you.

I'm sure he could could find me some vintage copies of Tatler or maybe get me an invitation to bounce around a stately home. I would take him as my guest as it's always fun to have someone else to bounce around a stately home with.

Tatlersnob! Thankyou for sharing. xx

Candy Pratts Price: How Gord could get back in FASHahhn

CPP © Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com

Style.com executive fashion director Candy Pratts Price (CPP) easily steals the show in the US Vogue movie doc The September Issue, out shortly, in which she stakes her claim for immortality with a one-liner: "SepTEMburr is the JANuahhry in FASHahhn". The way this Puerto Rican drawls and croaks out the dictum with the oddest basso cantate diction is one of many unintentionally comic moments, so much so, you can now download it as a ringtone (click arrow on Myxer to listen).

Candy (or Candida Rose Theresa Pratts Price) also appears in cartoon form in her periodic Candycasts on the Style.com site, laying down the law on such matters as eco-pod coffins (or "echo-pod" as she puts it. "Don't pollute, just bury correctly") and playing dominoes on Sunday (but not in Alabama). The Anna Wintourised stick insect 'toon-Candy bears little resemblance to the living-breathing irregular Candy, beyond her dark colouring; and the graphic version has the weirdest crossed arms: stretched out she'd be able to balance on them without stooping.

I just love CPP. And her animated form should be an inspiration to others who in the flesh may also not look entirely the part. Gordon Brown should think about joining the Bugs Bunny tribe and turning himself into a 'toon for his YouTube performances. He'd lose the eyebags, the alarm smiles, the intake-of-breath mouth movements: he could be made to be cute and sexy. I can't help but feel that this bold act of imagination could reverse his fortunes. Possibly. Think CPP, Gord.

CPP 'toon show

A celebration of CPP

Anna Wintour: 'US Vogue is not for blind people'

The editor of US Vogue, Anna Wintour, 97, says in this The September Issue movie trailer, as she casts her own fragile orbs on a magazine cover: "This type seems so large and pretentious, it looks like it's for blind people." There's sophistication for you.

For more info on the blind and partially sighted click here.

Anna Wintour and the curious case of the exorcism

Can it be true that US Vogue editor Anna Wintour wanted to have an exorcism conducted in her office after seeing The Devil Wears Prada? This is what one well-informed Arcatiste tells me. The "exorcism took the form of a fumigation and redecoration. And she asked her friend, the photographer Eric Boman (Blahnik by Boman) to hang some of his tastefully bland photos on the walls.

"Anna thought Eric's photos were very soothing and hoped they would change the decor a la blamange. She told Eric she wanted all traces of 'that bitch' exorcised for an eternity!" This is thought to be a reference to the infamous Miranda Priestley character played in the pic by Meryl Streep, plainly modelled on Wintour.

However, novelist and famed gosser Frances Lynn has something further to add: "I hear Anna Wintour asked Eric Boman to hang his soothing snaps on her office walls AFTER the exorcism ... she wanted a complete New Look."

Can anyone shed further light on the precise nature of the exorcism? Was it anything like this:?

Michael Gross and the furious Social Empress of New York

Is it the case that the uncrowned "Social Empress of New York" has waved her sceptre and decreed that a book she finds either embarrassing or inaccurate or both should be ignored by Anyone Who Cares What She Thinks? That it should in effect be allowed to die by ordained silence? Who knows?

The Empress in question is Annette de la Renta, the book, Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum, and its author the legendary, the inescapable, Michael Gross. His oeuvre includes non-fiction bestsellers Model and 740 Park.

Mrs de la Renta is the wife of the - omg!, gimme the grandest-sounding adjectival phrase, please - multiversal fashion designer Oscar. They are among the society Caesars and Cleos of America (NY in particular) - with the tragic ends missing, respectively. Apparently. They're so huuuuuge that even American Vogue editor Anna Wintour over-arches her back into an ageing stoop as she scrapes about in their presence. Not even the newly refurbished Hubble telescope can fully capture their social enormity. There isn't a lens big enough!

So, when this goddam writer Gross produced his sensational NY museum history book, which does not portray Annette (the sometime guardian of the late Social Empress of New York Brooke Astor's estate, and a trustees board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) in an entirely approved light, all hell broke loose. Museum types raged for and against Gross' book: indisputably, Gross had hit a raw nerve about a national institution. And Annette threatened legal action - she could sue yet in the US or turn libel tourist.

Suddenly, promised book reviews did not run, scheduled interviews did not appear. All this in the Land of the Free. No writ has been served as I write.

Was she offended by the stories about her and her late, wealthy philanthropist mother Jane Engelhard or was she aggrieved by Gross' impertinence in delving into Oscar's well-known sexual past? Or all of the above?

Annette de la Renta is rich enough and powerful enough to hire the best lawyers to speak on her behalf. I spoke with Michael Gross about the affair. (If you want more background, read Jesse Kornbluth's excellent report, click here)

Michael, my dear. You're imagining that sections of the US media have banned coverage of your book, aren't you? You've got sensitive?

"No. I did a fascinating interview with Daphne Merkin, a celebrated writer, for a publication-day story on The Daily Beast, Tina Brown's web site, that has still never appeared. I also know of at least one reporter who has received a warning letter from Mrs de la Renta's lawyers saying the book is 'full of misinformation' and another, at another newspaper, whose story on the book was killed by an editor who said that they would cause the book to be withdrawn and/or corrected and the newspaper would be left 'holding the bag.' I also know of several reviews that were scheduled and then mysteriously postponed. I hesitate to be more specific since I fear that the reporters and editors who have filled me and my publisher in on what's been happening (or more precisely, not happening) might themselves be at risk of retaliation."

You're saying the New York elite have closed ranks against you in defence of their Empress?

"I know that the New York elite - call them the 4,000 - love to know and discuss things no one else (ie, the public, the great unwashed, the NOCD types) knows. Much of what is in my book is no surprise to them. Many of them were my sources.

"That said, I suspect that the core issue here is not this or that nugget of revealing information but rather something larger and perhaps more threatening, my exposure of two things: the way things really work behind-the-scenes in a great American cultural institution - which no one involved wants revealed - and the picaresque saga of Jane Engelhard, whose riveting life story still has holes in it, despite my attempts to fill them, but which is nonetheless told in full for the first time in Rogues' Gallery. Both she and her daughter have battled every attempt to shed light on this saga - battles referred to in the book."

Is this just about the de la Rentas - or have you also upset the cultural snobs by telling the unauthorised and all-too-human story behind a national treasure, the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

"The sad fact is that the sort of people who create and sustain historical repositories like the Metropolitan do not want their own histories, or those of the institutions, revealed. Otherwise, why would they repeatedly obstruct researchers and make a mere book like mine into an object lesson, a warning to any who might think of following a similar path of crumbs?"

I understand the de la Rentas' friend Anna Wintour made her feelings known ....

"I ran into Anna Wintour at Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar shortly before the book came out. We have 'crossed swords' before, beginning when she was the editor of British Vogue and began an interview by instructing me in no uncertain terms that I was not to refer to her as Nuclear Wintour, so I was not surprised when she gave me a look I can only describe (by paraphrasing a designer) as 'standing in a strapless dress next to an open icebox.'"

As Kornbluth writes of the matter: "A rich woman has used a two-ton gorilla to threaten a writer, and, for whatever reason, silence has descended." If Annette de la Renta's legal threats are intended to chill interest in Gross' book, then they may well have succeeded for now.

But would it not make more sense, and be more in keeping with the freedom-loving spirit of the US, if she published a statement of rebuttal for all to see? What is unacceptable is the suspected exercise of informal social power to, in effect, banish a book to obscurity, and with the acquiescence of a generally gutless American media. Tina Brown - when will you become the mouse that roared?

For a great read, order a copy here.
Michael Gross website

Attitude's Matthew Todd seeks Cheese Scones

I assume that Matthew Todd, editor of Attitude since last year, placed this entry on MySpace before his giddy ascension:

"Who I'd like to meet: Someone to start a band with. I know a trillion and one muso industry people through work including a couple of very famous producers who said they'd be interested to hear anything I come up with. Wanna start an electro dance pop thang - kinda Pet Shop Boys meets Goldfrapp meets KLF. I sing and write lyrics so looking for a keyboardist/programmer/melody person. Get in touch. Or someone to be my boyfriend, move me to Cornwall/New York and feed me Cheese Scones all day long. Fuck off anyone from Attitude. (Xxxxx) "

Not exactly Anna Wintour, is it?

(My thanks to the naughty boy who drew this to my attention)

Catherine Ostler to edit Tatler. Oh dear

Yes, indeed. But my lips are sealed. I'm not one to gossip. Catherine, married conveniently to Condé Nast general manager Albert Read, is perfect for Tatler, a money- and status-worshipping priestess whose idea of heaven is a string of pearly noughts - she certainly never discouraged writer William Cash at ES from regaling us with news of his latest heiress love interest.

More to the point, Catherine suits her boss Nicholas Coleridge whose own craven attitude to wealth and status has to be seen to be believed - well, read one of his novels: just money measures set to dialogue. I shall never forget observing him running around like a deranged whippet at a Cartier polo day many years ago, trying to get a photo shot of the Queen blocked off by a crowd of ghastly gawpers. In those few moments I sensed all the materialist kinetic energy that drives him on.

As for Catherine, I'm just praying we don't have a Jane Procter re-run. I understand that she is blessed with a clear sense of purpose that sometimes is enforced by a voice that might be appreciated at the Royal Opera House. Or Wembley.

Christian Bale: Dickhead's rant turned to dance classic

Screaming Christian Bale's bullying rant at someone on the set of Terminator: Salvation has been turned into a great dance track (with a Barbra Streisand cameo) by RevoLucian.

Gunpowder Magazine and a Wintour/Brûlé orgy

I can't imagine anything more dreadful: an Anna Wintour-Tyler Brûlé sandwich (with ancient old me as the filling) in my canopied four-poster. And yet that is the dread image summoned up as I click through a newish online fashion daily called Gunpowder Magazine.

It confessedly aspires to match the work of the two divinities of Fashion & Style (Fasyle?) - my Wintour/Brûlé body warmers - though I can't help but wonder whether either of them would ever willingly showcase the work of, say, photographer Justin Monroe and his Muscle Mary fisters (almost) or The New InterCourses Cookbook and its Creamy Stuffed Figs, as Gunpowder does. I fear that editor Nick Clarke is dangerously contiguous to Arcatiland and its intermittent preoccupations with cock-cunt permutations. If this is the case then of course I am deeply honoured and welcome the future cross-fertilisation of ideas between Gunpowder and the unreadable and deadening zombielands of Vogue/Monocle/Wallpaper*. Certainly, Anna looks like she could do with a Creamy Stuffed Fig.

Even an Enache Florin-designed Peugeot, "with its lightweight body covered with sexy touch-sensors," is headlined I Touch Myself. Can you imagine Tyler, whose carbon footprint makes him the Yeti of International Travel, touching himself? Actually, I can.

So Gunpowder Magazine gets my ringing endorsement: anything that can sexualise a fig or a Peugeot can't go wrong. The fashionistas are sure to catch on once they've learnt there's life after Ugly Betty and death assured to Anna.

Perhaps these two trends can be hastened in a legally nice way.

Click here to have sex with Gunpowder Magazine.

American Vogue - free advertising at Sundance and beyond

Anna Wintour has triumphantly pulled off a great wheeze and got her title American Vogue potentially millions of pounds of free global advertising. Director RJ Cutler, a corpulent bearded creep by the looks of him, has made fly-on-the-wall docu-movie The September Issue - showcased at Sundance - which records the making of the mag's largest issue of the year. Apparently her legendary 70-something fashion director Grace Coddington steals the show and even threatened to resign if the film went ahead. A likely tale. Just imagine - Wintour on movie hoardings like a film star!

Incidentally, it's OK to swig water from a bottle in public - Anna does.