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from: Troy Patterson

Salman Rushdie on The Devil Wears Prada.

Posted Monday, Sept. 11, 2006, at 11:03 AM ET
Diane Von Furstenberg Show. Click image to expand.

"Diane's an old friend," Salman Rushdie told me by way of explaining his presence at Diane von Furstenberg's Sunday-night spectacle. It was the only chic response to give, and there can be no doubt that Arielle Dombasle, Diane Sawyer, and Graydon Carter would have said the same. The novelist and his wife were among the few dozen old friends whom Diane had seated in the middle of the runway. Two rows of chairs stood back to back, and later, during the show, the models looped around them, revealing the clothes—crisp shifts, smart skirts, classic DvF wrap dresses—to be brazenly joyful. But in the moments before liftoff, the runway was just a scrum where you had to squirm between television crews in order to slither among movie moguls.

Asked if he could think of any novels that were especially sharp about the fashion business, Rushdie said jovially, "No—other than The Devil Wears Prada."

Diane Von Furstenberg Show. Click image to expand.

You read that? "No—and neither have I seen the film, but I'm told they're … "

No—if you wanted a relevant insight from a writer in these parts, you had to fight your way up the row and crouch down next to Fran Lebowitz.

"Diane's an old friend," Lebowitz told me. Asked if fashion shows had fundamentally changed over the years she'd been attending them, she said, "Are you kidding? It's like a hockey game now. Fashion used to be small, and it used to be gay. It used to be knowledgeable. And now … " She gestured up at the room—a contrasting vision at that moment, I guess. I couldn't say for sure as my head was just then wedged under a TV camera angling for a better view of Aaron Eckhart.

"I don't know Diane," the movie star told Condé Nast's Style.com. "But I love wrap dresses!"

fashion
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1234567891011
from: Troy Patterson

Salman Rushdie on The Devil Wears Prada.

Posted Monday, Sept. 11, 2006, at 11:03 AM ET
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Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.
Photograph of model on Slate's home page by Mark Mainz/Getty. Photograph of Paris Hilton impersonator Natalie Reid by TP2/ARB/WENN Photos. Photograph of the Diane von Furstenberg show by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for IMG. Photograph of Paris and Nicky Hilton at the Heatherette show by Mark Mainz/Getty Images for IMG. Photograph of model on Slate's home page by Mark Mainz/Getty. Photograph of Project Runway host Heidi Klum on Slate's home page by Mark Mainz/Getty Images For IMG.
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